No no. Village comm quests aren't an issue. It's the village -conflict- quests. I don't think anyone's objecting to conflict as long as for a change it doesn't result in pvp. Problem is alternatives like these are underused simply because killing still sorts the job out, and is used to do that.

It seems that I am going to have to eat my words. He has posted a lot of general impressions, especially on this thread, but posted no actual ideas on how to fix it, and most of his past ideas have dealt with more RP / bandaid issues instead of the actual discussion at hand.

This is a pk mud. Almost ALL of the skills you learn revolve around pk. Why is it that you think there shouldn't be PK and PVP conflict quests in a game that is fundamentally based on PVP?? If you seriously want to play a non-pk mud, please go play a Mush or LP mud.

I would be sorely upset if the pvp conflict was reduced even more than it has been, considering I've put hundreds of real dollars into my characters to get pvp skills which would then be utterly useless to me.

It saddens me that the administration is actually seriously considering reducing pvp conflicts even more because of a few whinners that don't want to learn how to fight or how to help their fellow citizens learn how to fight.

I am by no stretch of the imagination a good pker, but I don't whine when I lose a fight, and I certainly didn't whine when Magnagora lost most of their villages in the influencing session prior to this one. I helped our citizens and leaders figure out why we lost, and helped to rectify those issues within the city. And from that work, we came back this season and stomped everyone else, even in the peaced Estelbar!

Again, I say leave the conflict quests as they are or maybe tweak them a bit, but removing the conflict will ruin the game.

I'm not sure which thing you're referring to, Xenthos.

Of my Big Three problems, I'd agree I haven't posted specific ideas on how to address the power balance/imbalance one.

On the support for roleplay one, I have posted jillions. Elryn and I have been working in private on some, at Lisaera's request, just within the last week (and I've sent Lisaera an initial offering on that), but there's gobs more. For instance, a big post on how to develop racial roleplay, which goes into some detail about the admin's part. Things about guild roleplay. Things about having admins dedicated to roleplay support, and about them spending some time on it. Things about admins possessing mobs. Things about player-driven "events". Things about making the rules more clear about RP being required. Way too much about what OOC information should be brought IC. Things about non-PK-oriented skills and ways to affect the world around us more than just in fights and quests. Things about places where a tiny bit of admin support can facilitate gobs of roleplay, like my aslaran totem pole event-that-never-was. Things about flexibility about letting quests be changed, like in the case of the dead adder quest (dead modifies both adder and quest there). And on and on.

On the conflict one, my proposal is basically what I said earlier in this thread, which I've said a jillion times. Give us room to steer our conflict some of the time, and stop making everything antagonistic. The suggestion here is mostly to do less of some things, not keep adding more. (Though I've also had a lot to say about the mistake of neutering Avechna by making everything important that happens happen where he's not watching.)

In all three, as I said in that epic post that Estarra will probably murder me in my sleep tonight for, there is no simple solution to post, no simple suggestion to make, because what's warranted is a big step back and a re-evaluation of some fundamental design decisions. If anyone seriously wants a suggestion from me, it is that. Step back and look, with an open mind and a fresh eye, at these three issues. That's not going to look like an "idea on how to fix it". That's the whole bloody point. I have posted ideas for "bandaid" issues because that's the only thing that gets listened to, but I've also said "look at the deeper problem" consistently as well.

No, actually, this isn't a PK MUD, it's a MUD that actually encompasses a lot of things. Notice that what I pointed out wouldn't ACTUALLY reduce PK, instead it would make -other- options more viable if fixed. If people had some recourse OTHER than PK to affect enemy places (don't talk about the quests, you know how PK orientated they are) it might help to reduce the load and help people fight back.

I'm not going to be childish and say "If you want a MUD where all you do is PK go play...

...some other MUD that does that" (I'm not familiar with many, shh) but I'm not sure what's wrong with what I said, either.

Here is my suggestion. Implement a war system and convert village influencing to be entirely peaceful. Have the war system capture room-by-room territory, the possession of which enhances the commodity output of the villages under your control...woodlands territories increase wood production, mountains increase metals and gems, and so on.

Add more villages. Seriously. Introduce a mechanic that makes villages closer to your city easier to influence, and those further away harder, so as to create a natural balance without excluding the possibility of pushing beyond it.

Temporarily disable all conflict quests.

Nurse the realm on a system of rich, frequent, and voluntary conflict that rewards those cities who participate, but harms those who do not very little. What we really need to move away from is making people feel like they must involve themselves in fighting when they don't want to. Eventually, they will leave, or you will cater to them and make those who enjoy that conflict leave. It's possible to keep both.

Please don't get rid of too much.

I say leave as is and let us work it out for once; we're big kids, if we can't play nice, then take our toys off us.

I think the core thing is that when teams are unbalanced, it leads to eventual problems. This is why FPS games have algorithms to force two teams to be of equal size, and sometimes equal skill levels.

The admins might need to work on balancing things through other means. Magnagora has two gods, right? Fain and Raezon? What if they have a falling out. Evil turns on itself, so they say. What if Fain orders his disciples to focus on Serenwilde, while Raezon orders disciples to keep at Celest, and they zap people who break this edict?

This would be a way to break up unfair advantages if it gets repetative, as well as try to influence the politics. The only way to have fair play is to have an involved game master, I guess.

Sadly, fantasy gaming is usually always more hack and slash than storytelling, so there's probably no avoiding it. But things can be done to improve upon it.

Didn't have the time to read everything else.



But what I think is that these quests that can hurt the other places need to be tweaked so that you can hurt -anyone-. I feel as if we're too hard coded against each other. I want a quest that lets Glomdoring hurt Celest, or if Celest and Serenwilde have a falling-out, a quest that lets them hurt each other as well.

The only thing I can think of to solve this problem would be to remove all control to these quests from players and make them happen on a regular basis but not too often (like once or twice per RL month? ). But what do i know, maybe we can handle this ourselves but it simply doesn't seem likely to happen anytime soon



No way in hell. We don't want another Mhaldor where we only have to listen to one god

Firstly, our Gods really aren't that active. Secondly, that would essentually rip the city in half. I don't think the solution to whatever problem is going on is to ruin Magnagora just so that all the cities can be equal.

I think this whole thread stems from the accusation that the administration is some how responsible for assuring that player vs player conflict doesn't escalade so far that all the Supernals are dead. Beyond the fact I can't comprehend how it's really anyone's fault (Celest can't be held liable for having, gasp, LIVES, and not being on 24/7! Magnagora can't be at fault . It's their role and purpouse. Next person to suggest it's the administration's fault is getting castrasted. I say we blame the Glomdoring).

All of the suggestions you posted, Estarra, are rediculous and I think everyone knows it. I only briefly skimmed the threads, but I do believe everyone is in agreeance with this fact.

Honestly, I believe making angels/archangels/cherubs/divas and their Nil counter-parts considered commodities might help the situation. That is, the same as when Serenwilde converted Fae - they stayed loyal to Moon. As well, I agree with the idea of quests to help the Supernals - And, of course, like quests for Nil. What? I can't imagine.

The greatest solution is taking half the fighters from Magnagora and giving them to Celest. Bam. Obviously, this doesn't work. Really, I think Magnagora DOES need to step back and realize this is rediculous. When Estarra considers tearing conflict out pretty much entirely, and making Lusternia into a MUSH (which I would cry many, many tears over), you know it's at it's breaking point. Keep going, and you'll ruin the fun for more than just everyone else - you'll ruin it for yourselves, too.

So let's all take a chill pill and take turns smoking out of the STFU pipe. When we all get a niiice long night's sleep, some beddy-bye bed time tea, and maybe a nice weekend at the beach (I'll lend you my boat. It's not far. Pretty bois get to use the jetski), I imagine we'll all realize this was just another phase and it'll blow over.

The Berlin Wall wasn't taken down over night, yanno.

Mm, a mere suggestion on my part. Perhaps some role-play within Celest, with the Supernals. Methrenton and Shakaniel (sp?) speaking with a few (perhaps many) on the merits of peace, but also on the merits of conflict - how fighting has become a necessity. Last hope for the Basin, etc, etc. But kill this notion of "ZOMG PEACE KTHNX". Isune's gone, so it's partially done. Let's just get some method of forcing it through the thicker skulls that, while Raziela condones LOVE, she does not necessarily condone snuggling the Faeslayers and Taint-scum. Kalo loves everything (not limited to honey cakes and riding), but he realizes violence is a necessity when moral cries for repentance fail.

None of these problems are the actual issue with Lusternia at this point. What we really need are more roleplay opportunities, as Gwylifar said, that don't involve/require world-wide involvement. We need internal development of cultures throughout Lusternia to make the world something more than it already is. We have the bad ass skills, we have the uniquely developed system of quests and influencing, and that's all great, but now is the time to sidetrack from hard-coded development and let some roleplay flourish.

It would really help and I'm not asking for Lisaera to suddenly sit the Seren down and have storytime or for Lacostian to return to Celest to spread wisdom through the past's lessons. Small, immersive opportunities that may be nursed to existance at first, but would eventually become player-driven and integrated into Lusternia without you having to remind people that a race simply isn't different attributes, but each has its own piece waiting to be discovered, or maybe to help nudge some under-developed guilds in terms of roleplay to a level where you may want them.

To sum it up: We all just need to step away from combat = roleplay and develop something new in terms of roleplay that even the common man can participate in and enjoy. Then maybe the combat won't seem like so much (Nor would it be a big focus) and even those who may discourage it can always have something else to do or a non-violent role in terms character interaction.

Dont you dare doing it Estarra. If you take this out what will left?
Conflict is good, it can be fun, and in most cases it is like this.

It's start be boring when we have to work few hours on rising Supernal and after we do this, Mags are coming again and want to kill him again, and we have to start from over, not mentioning that we have 4 supernals to rise (it was 4 when i was going to bed, in a moment i will check whats up on Lusternia and i'm terrified what i could see there).

Would there be a way to change some of these quests so they are more adaptable? depending on how the Players move the conflict?

Here would be something that I'd propose:

You've got the Vs. quest Place A vs. Place B sizable amount of power gained, RP wise you're doing something nasty to them that they're getting pissed off at you.

Have two more options, one being a reduction in the power gained, and you not ticking off the other Place's charactors as much. It's sorta adapting off of the Government styles, how you can be mean the a village and take a lot of power/comms from it, or be nice and not take much at all.. why can't we have something like that between cities/communes?

I don't think that'll matter. I'm going to be pissed if I lose 5k power or 3k power or even 1k power from some stupid zombie moggy (You know who you are) killing my Moon Avatars.

What about a system where the city denziens and related items end up increasing or decreasing based on player success or failure.

For instance, if Celest is taking a beating, more guards and creatures start poping up to cope with the increased war from their enemies. Similarly, with Magnagora's success comes decadence from their own staff, and their denziens become to complacent and then there are fewer guards available.

Do you have any other suggestions other than Mag sucks or Mag needs to stop doing anything? I won't even get into the RP aspect of that, but will say you only seek to drive more players away in that fashion. I can tell you, I'm not going to have a desire to log in if I'm barred from doing anything other than bash. Before you post there is plenty else to do, Magnagora DOES plenty. As I posted elsewhere...we have combat tournies, literary contests, guild rp events, and other things. However, the end of all aggression by a city founded on it would drive me and many others from Lusternia. (Not a threat, simply a point. There is no reason to be here if we can do nothing)

That being said, I think a few simple changes can result in a renewed vigour by people within the game. I like the idea of some way to power up the Supernal/Demon Lords/Maidens..perhaps not something repetitive, but something that can be done once for each time they are alive. It leaves them open to assault still (which I think should be a possibility) and also helps to beef them up a bit. If you make a repetitive quest to power them, I can see cities/communes making large groups work on it 24/7 and we will have immortals at that point.

As far as the balance of power, it will change again over time. Celest needs fighters and people in general..relax what is needed to come to your city. As I believe someone posted, the waiting period and other reqs was a big turnoff for those looking to go there. It turned me off in the end. Serenwilde is doing well I think, and can usually hold its own against Mag when needed. Most of the big problems can be solved by individual cities and only need some dedicated folks to work to fix them. Looking to the heavens and making huge changes to the game is not going to win you many things other than more bitching from the other side of the coin.