Look at it as more of a tip then adding to the discussion. If you want to be heard, drop the superior attitude.

I personally don't quest much, so any change or lack of a change wouldn't affect me much. However, I don't see a problem with the way things are. A very small population of the game would do quests just for the satisfaction of completing them. Why should the admins spend the time designing quality quests for a small group to do once then move on? The changes you propose are unreasonable, not to mention unfair to the people who quest to make a living in the game.

Now I might have gotten a bit too entangled into defuting other people's points there for the sake of it.

I don't really think the randomization in the quests is bad, or even insufficient for replayability. What I definately don't have in mind is hardcoding each quest only to be doable once. But I believe the removal of direct experience and gold rewards (NOT the side effects on the game world. Those should stay, and I'd like to see them more often) would have the effect that people would indeed replay a quest because they actually liked the puzzles and had fun solving them. And I strongly don't believe people would actively farm the quests then.

As for what quest I have in mind? Well, that would require some premeditation to come up with something really solid. But in light of recent events, something did spring into my mind, so I'll try to put some very rough contours of the idea into words:

For example the long-pondered possibility of sealing the gorgogs permanently / for a long time. That could get pretty engrossing, I think. Require the involvement of at least an Aquamancer, a Celestine, a Nihilist, and a Geomancer. Throw in some warrior type people, since what's an epic quest without horrible monsters. Add options of either succeeding by wary cooperation in uneasy peace, or horrible backstabbing and massive transplanar raids. That sort of thing. This I'm making up on the go, I might come up with something more detailed given time and a fit of inspiration - I'm really, really not good at anything even closely related to literature.

Can we PLEASE get over that? I had already admitted it was stupid of me to say that, and edited that away as the first thing I did after waking up. (Yes, I have a computer at my bed).



That is precisely the sort of behaviour I want to see reduced. It's not fair, it's not an enjoyable challenge, it's not sensible, it's not fun.

I so want an "OH RLY?" emoticon... And I don't really think half-thoughtless mechanical farming is quite proper appreciation for the work spent on them by the admin team. But that's not something up to me to answer for them.

It is also left as an exercise to the reader to try and think why the aforementioned population of dedicated questers is small. I switched to Lusternia despite having some serious quirks about many aspects of the MUD precisely because I find its good points overweigh. The good points being the uncanny ability of the Iron Realms people to create actual engrossing content, involving quests being an unnegligible part of that. It's a great disappointment to see that this killer feature boils down to the same old farming and numberchasing as found elsewhere under a different disguise.



There are other ways to make a living. I did in some of the posts propose some related changes to go along with it to compensate for my proposal, basically shifting a balance between the source of gold and experience in the game from the unique questing to the already present, more labor-like activities available. A sort of separation of purposes between the game elements, if you will, having the work be work, and the challenge be challenge. I'm also not opposed to having the proposal tweaked, in the unlikely event of it being seriously considered, and indeed I wouldn't even like to see a change radical as this happen without a rebalancing factor to it.

I very much enjoy bashing, I find it vastly superior to any of those stupid quests you folks are so entertained with! Problem is, the krokani are always bashed out and even when I get there in time to kill one or two as they are repopping someone else is already camping out waiting to kill them. Rather than find somewhere else to bash or something else to do (RP, ew!), I would like to ask that the admins make the mobs reset upon my entry into Castle Djarrakh and only be vanquishable to me for the duration of my bashing spree. Thankyouverymuch.

Perhaps the creators of Lusternia should make available a take-home version so people like us can download and play the MUD without the interference of those pesky other players. I mean, why do they call it a Multi-User whatever?

...anyway...


Accessible, yes I think so. I do not mean every newbie can walk in there and complete it, but you get a taste of what it's like and you learn different parts of questing. I myself have never completed the Delport quest (not being able to enter the place half the time makes it tough ) but I do remember well some of the things I learned from attempting it some time ago, like the importance of looking closely at room descriptions, which have had a lasting effect.


I'm not sure what part you took to mean I was apologizing for other people hogging the quests, because I did in fact agree with you that it's frustrating. I'm also saying that's just something you're going to have to live with as part of a multi-user game that has a player base like Lusternia's. It can be kept in check but only to a certain point.

...by the way is it even possible to "farm" the honors quests to the extent that you say? There seems to be a pretty long time before you can even start to redo it once it's been completed, they're not just on the 45 minute/1 hour reset clock like mobs. Perhaps you're just perceiving it differently when the reality is that at whichever point you show up, it's just not doable, and have bad timing?

It's reached a point where I'm not going to read your babble anymore. You came in with a bad attitude, decided to insult everyone else who came in, and expect people to be nice?

I'm expecting people to be to the point, and to accept when I actually admit I'm stupid and edit out nonsense / correct myself, instead of droning on and on and on about how horrible I am. Beside that, feel free to be as rude and offensive at me as you wish.



Well excuse me for proposing a change to help alleviate this interference from other players. I would accept if said interference was somehow consistent with the game world. Like opposing solutions to a quest, or uests that require cooperation. Or both at once. Just not "who gets there first after the quest resets", because I don't see the sense in that and only find it annyoing.

"Farming" is probably not correct term for it, but what I had in mind are the people that will redo a quest for the money instantly after it resets - it doesn't take someone that knows the outline of the solution any actual effort. It's not farming per se, but you don't need a lot of people actually doing that in the playerbase for the resultnig effect to be the same - the quests being unavailable a large majority of the time.

We were warned in the thread title that this was liable to be a rant. And so it proved. However, David has apologised for comments which have been most censured, and we should probably leave him alone at that. The point of this thread is not a sideways issue about paying customers, or an excuse to needle David because of the way in which he put forth his opinions (which I may add hasn't offended me in the least), but to discuss the ways in which quests are sat on.

I have agreed with him. I don't like it. It -is- frustrating. Personally, once I've done a quest once, I never do it again. (Except the Old Celest quest.. which in all honesty I will admit I've done twice). On the other hand, the karma and gold is nice... and it's a nice compensation for the time spent wasting blessings trying to work the damn things out. The EXP is negligible to me.

I guess a big part of this post could be because of me. I'm, by David's definition, a farmer. I HATE bashing just to bash: it's boring to me, and any gain just isn't worth the trouble. Killing something is really only fun to me if there's a seperate reason to pull it off.

As such, I quest. I scoot over to the Spectes because my city needs it (ok, the gold/experience/karma helps ALOT as well), I work the city quests since many, especially the ones requiring you do the comm quests (sidenote: There's NO reason to make a guess in Delport, since doing the quest properly always gives you the full answer) also aid the city: the ones that don't use puzzles, which are still fun to work through. I know until recently I was a BIG reason Shanthmark was constantly completed, and would be the same with Stewards if someone didn't beat me to it .

So I guess it makes sense when I say that I'm defending my actions. The reason? I believe that lusternian quests ARE meant to be an alternative way of earning gold and exp. It's there so that you don't have to sit there and bash all day to get anything and, instead, grow by 'interacting' with the populus. Myself, I consider "Taking a job in Shanthmark in the Lodge" MUCH more reasonable for most characters' RP than "Killing things in Shanthmark" as most MUDs would want you to do.

Assuming such, the fact that people do quests regularly for gold/exp not only makes sense to me, but also shows that Lusternia isn't an Everquest hiding behind a Story.

Now how does that relate to the issue at hand? Similar to what happens to the Krokani for people who Bash: too many people and too few areas. If more people took up Influence (read as: if Influencing was easier to access at a low level OR if you could use Influencing to get past level 90) you'd eventually see the same thing.

In short: the quests are being..well.. Bashed out.


How to fix it? Not with hard coding to simply STOP repeat questers from running. It's eliminating a style of growing, which, in turn, pushes those people from competing for quests into competing for more bashing/influencing spots (which, bashers can tell you, suffer the same problem: too many people going for too few spots). Besides, doing a puzzle the firstis NOT the only enjoyment out of a puzzle: others actually enjoy trying to improve from there: trying to solve that puzzle faster than before ("Oh, I figured out all of the couples in 30 minutes.. can I do it in 20? 15?"). Myself I still head to Angkrag sometimes because I SWARE I can find a pattern to that stupid orc that will let me win more oftain (I refuse to believe he's THAT random).

Now Flagging such people into giving them harder quests? Sure, IF the quest gave more. Then it would be similar to giving a basher a harder mob to kill than someone new: more difficulty, better gain. I'd actually like it if we could pull it off. It would be a mess to code (the game only keeps track of who's doing the quest in small ways, and only for a limited time).

What I think would truly solve the problem, though, is just by adding more quests. We're a growing mud and growing muds always need to expand. More quests, more areas, more bashing grounds, more...stuff. Of course, that's already happening, as proven by Aetherspace (which, I'm hoping, would get many of the highly powered people flat out off prime).

Anything else wouldn't realy stop the problem: just shift who gets the goods and who gets the shaft.

Fluffs go out to Cwin for finally breaking out of the revolving pattern of mutual quibbling and bringing a constructive post at last. And yes, growing Lusternia would indeed help with crowding, but it requires addition of content, which isn't always easy and doesn't quite scale flexibly with the number of players. But you brought forth some very interesting points, and I'll try to work on themby proposing a more realistic, albeit still extensive and somewhat improbable set of changes:

Rework the way quests work, letting more people do them at the same time, by means of segmenting the game and / or individually tracking the state of the completion of a quest. This can be done, and has been done on online games. Despite sarcasm and personal slander claiming otherwise, the simpler quests -are- essentially single-player affairs - the argument that the fact someone else can botch them or beat you to them doesn't hold water in my eyes. That's not the proper way to deliver a multiplayer experience.

I think the core of the unique multiplayer experience in Lusternia and I think all other Iron Realms games lies completely elsewhere. It's the very realistic, integrated, and living game world. It's the very rare balance between very rich options for roleplay beyond the MUSH-like random player-contrived plots in the sense of actually affecting the game world, and the unique combat system (despite my unrelated quirks with it) and provisions for lighthearted hack-and-slash PvP. (I wish more MUDs had arenas) And it's the worldwide, heck, multiplanar directed events that shape the future of the very tangile game plot. Please don't prove me wrong on this.

It's not racing to make it to a bashing spot / quest / golden sand repop first. I seriously don't think anyone seeking an involved multiplayer experience would be limited at all if the annoyance behind just going out and hacking at some monsters when you feel like it went away. It's one thing I'm not buying without some hard proof behind it. And forcing someone into that by insisting on denying variety is an attitude I can not and will not adopt.

This should be balanced by some restrictions or limitations concerning the rewards from the quests given their resulting higher overall availability. Maybe imposing timers on between when a quest can be done, or on between when the quest will give a tangible reward for people that would re-do a quest to see if they can overdo themselves. Another option is gradually reducing the reward for repeated attempts at a quest to encourage people to move on and try something new, potentially also with the reward resetting or going back to some higher amount after a time to avoid a situation when there's nothing worth doing again. While I could indeed live with complete nerfing because I don't really need to be rewarded for overcoming a challenge, in retrospect the concept is certainly way too limiting to a significant part of the playerbase, and that's not something I wanted to achieve in the least.

I also have a few final points on the confrontational note that crossed my mind while waiting for various means of public transit in this bloody cold:

To anyone who might bring up the issue of me wanting to play Lusternia as I'd play a single-player game again: I don't think persistent solo bashing or persistent solo questing qualifies as a multiplayer gameplay style only because there's someone around to prevent you from doing so. (Doing so in relation with city vs, city affairs notwithstanding.) If the only aspect of the game's multiplayer nature involved in this is one that can be only impeding, I can't possibly view that as an enjoyable experience. I'd like to ask everyone if he'd honestly prefer a game where there's usually, or even occasionally plain nothing to do for him as opposed to one there is, just because there's other people around to justify that. The fact there's a reason for a phenomenon doesn't mean I have to be happy with it.

And in response to various "you have to get used to it" comments, I repeat: I don't have to. And that's not meant in the stubborn whiner sense. I -really- don't have to. The sole purpose and justification of the very existence of this and any other game is to be enjoyed by its players, which involved the game being as much fun as possible, and as little frustrating as possible. And the game world is completely, exclusively, and without exception controlled by the administration / development team of the game. In that sense, there's absolutely nothing saying I have to get used to anything save for a complete lack of will to change that. I was trying to propose a set of changes which I thought would, given fleshing out major and minor issues, roughing the radical edges, and balance tweaking, make the game overall more enjoyable for everyone involved by potentially offering more varied activitiesto do while online, and ensuring the reasonable availability of these activities. Having stuff do >> not having stuff to do, no matter what the reason. I believe making the game flat out more actual fun by reducing grind and increasing the availability of activities in it is not a goal unworthy of striving for, or at least musing about. I also think there's no reason at all why that shouldn't be doable without harming game balance - that's an issue completely orthogonal.

I should really, really stop constantly repeating myself...

Repeating yourself is something that has to happen when a thread gets sidetracked from its original intention. In the case of this one, it's because you managed to offend the vast majority of its readers. As it happens, I agree with you (though I am one who -does- live with it, and I don't much like your alternatives), but if every time you post, you successfully irritate every other poster on the thread, you'll never get your point across. It will be lost in a white noise of insult and irritation.

As Acrune said:

While I can understand the concern, I don't agree with it at all. If I want to bash gorgogs and someone has already bashed gorgogs (and that's often), well then too bad for me.

If you want to do a quest where someone is already doing a quest, too bad for you. That's life.

*cough* No it's not. The whole point.

He seemed to be more saying that in life youre not always going to get to do the things you want and that you will most likely have to wait until a good time to do it. It happens. I dont do many quests anymore, not anymore but Hallifax and Guadiguch. Do I do it for the gold, the experience, the honours line? No, I do it because I want to do my best in returning Guadiguch and coincidentally we have to help free Hallifax at the same time because supposedly the Nexii (nexuses?) are in some form connected at the moment.

Most people justify their 'farming' of a quest because it usually helps -something-, whether it be power, City or just village happiness. Also they can also hurt the opposite City or Commune which helps your City and Commune.

Just keep trying to do a quest, you'll eventually get to finish it. If you must on your own City's aether mention youre doing the quest and ask that no one try and disrupt it if you find its available, or you know if you find it available ask in a yell is anyone doing the quest. If no one answers than ask over your City aether. If no one answers, procede to your own happiness.

Personally, I would like to see certain quests made harder (i.e. the murder quest, which I probably can complete in under five minutes, and probably have done so as well by going: push thing, get thing, pull thing get thing, open door, get key, close door, get key, push thing, unlock safe, open safe, get thing, ask about so and so, ask about so and so to someone else, and go give stuff to a certain person, say stuff about stuff to that person, and *poof*, done), and others I think are just fine (i.e. the rockeater one, takes a little more time and effort, over a given period of time)

as to the issue of farming, had I the time and patience or lack of a better source of gold I'd probably be one of them, so I personally don't see the problem with it. Although, I can see the problem if you can't get on at certain times, so maybe if the time that the quests become active again, which I think is somewhere around the range to 6-10 hours, probably 8, were reduced to a shorter period of time that would be more reasonable so that more people could do it (i.e so maybe 6 people could complete a quest in a given day instead of just two or three people) would probably be a more reasonable solution to just saying 'you can only do a quest once'.

Buddy, this is a "my way or the highway" situation. If you don't like the game like the 80ish average people online at any time...
Feel free to leave.

And you're being kinda assumptuous to think this point hasn't been brought up before. Karma release, anyone?

They aren't gunna change it.

I heard the rewards for honours quests are crud, so I don't bother.

Back when I "quest-whored" as my entire source of income and experience (but I did it in a way I consider completely fair, though I have no need to go into that here), I could do the Stewartsville quest in four minutes max. I timed myself. Paavik, when it came out, I realized was even easier - assuming it is the right time of day for the quest, I could do it in two minutes flat. I wish more quests were like the Kingmaker quest (which can sadly only be done like, once every three-ten game years now), or the Shanthmark quest, or the Old Celest quest, none of which can be done in mere moments.

I do like the trend of the new honors-ish quests that were recently released, like the Toronada one and the Facility one, ones where the denizens remember how much of the quest you have completed, so you can take your time doing them, and if many people are doing them at once, it just makes the quest take longer, it doesn't prevent others from doing it.

The solution to the problem of quests being "whored" is both simple and already being done. That is, to have more of them made. Sick of the Prime quests being never doable? Get a lift to Candyland or Dramube or the Facility.

To make a note: the burning you got from the community WAS warrented. The fact that it's repeated is due to the fact that there's a large group of people here and, thus, as more people read this more people will grow angry and want to reply. This forum is VERY bad at it, since some people just downright hate each other (and yes, I'm meaning the term Hate here) a topic can easily swing into a VERY nasty flame war.

There will probably be a few to flame you past this point. Best thing to do is to not reply: you made your point and they just wanted to put their $.02 in, just leave it at that.

But enough of that. Back on topic.


While 'add more' IS a Blah answer, it's specificly a required one for this place, which needs to grow for many, many reasons (including: Story purposes, lack of PK areas, more need for spots of conflict, ext.). As such, for Lusternia, it's truly the best option.


(shortened for briefity)

Much of that would be VERY tricky to make work, considering many of the harder quests. For example, closing the rift in the gorgog quest requires killing gorgogs. On the other hand, simply enjoying to bash, gaining essence, earning gold, or keeping the rift open ALSO may require killing gorgogs. Other than working the game in a way similar to WOW (which presents a host of other issues, not the least coding and resources) how do you make THAT work? Same goes for quests that require you gather certain items scattered around (i.e. almost every village honors quest).

Best choice I would make is the one where repeat uses temporarily lowers the gains. It could probably be done by altering whatever flag is used to mark when you've done an honors quest to, instead, keep track of how oftain you're doing it, with, perhaps, a reset. x times a week/month/whatever means gains drop by x% until next week/month/whatever.

Expansion and that will help things out. It won't SOLVE the matter (nothing will) but it'll help.



The meaning behind that comment lies in the matter of 'taking your turn'. Lusternia, with it's player-run economy has, by requirement, limited supplies: Only so many cows are out there to give milk, only so many rockeaters can be given for gems, on so many quests can be done to make gold. As such, there are going to be people who get the gold and people who don't. Since we are playing a multiplayer game, we have to realize that no matter what we do there will always be 50 people wanting to do 10 quests and, thus, 40 people who will have to do something else instead.

Why not just let all 50 people do the quest anyway? We had an issue with that a while back, with old Astral. The area was, basicly, a near unlimited bashing/gold/essence gaining ground with no risk. The result, though, was that gold became so easy to get for some people that they ran out of things to do with it, and the issue of demigods/titans (L100/L99 players respectively), something we didn't plan on having for years, came about after about..what.. 6 months? The only reason why the place didn't ruin the economy completely was because the requirements to bashing there was so limiting (Trans planar, which you only really should get after 2-3 other skills are trans at least) and that the playerbase was so small. Before it got TOO bad, Astral was sabatoged and, later, altered to be harder to overuse.

The point? We can't let EVERYONE ride the pony, and there's alot of people who want a ride. We can try to even things up a little but still, you have to take your turn. THAT'S what is meant by "This isn't single player".




Tricky part is the last bit: Harming game balance. The only quests I can really think of that doesn't have a real affect on the world are SOME of the honors quests. Almost everything else has a real and tangable affect on part of the world. Myself, I had to STOP doing the Shanthmark quest when Serenwilde had the village because doing it would benifit their village: In fact, if I could botch it, I would (note: yes, the main part of the quest doesn't help the village and commune, but you can't DO that part without the rest). The Aslaran/Krokani fight may not help a city directly, but there's a mess of RP reasons to not want one side slaughtered.

As such, beyond a very limited set of quests (legendary Stewardsvile murder a prime example), you really can't just make everything more availible without messing something up.

Besides, you can argue that you aren't really playing Lusternia fully. Lusternia's focus is, really, in the goings on of the various nations: the conflicts, the allies, the drama. The quests, while fun and useful, are but a VERY SMALL piece of the action. It's like playing a space strategy game only because you like seeing ships blow up. As such, if the quests are all done, there really should be a batch more things you could be doing, like working with your guild/city, getting to know people, combat training, studying the world, trying to get your Trade going, ext. Blah, I bet you havn't even found HALF of the honor quests out there (there's much more than the village quests, I can tell you that), and some of THOSE are never done: you could look for those. True, you should be able to have fun, but this isn't a pure "Quest to success" game, like RPGs are and, as such, ONLY playing for the quests will lead to issues (I say the same for any 'purist'. PURE PKers would have an easier time in Godwars, while PURE Bashers would probably prefer Ragnarok Online). Lusternia's a game for those that like variety, competition, and group organization (emphasis on the last, with the focus on the Nations). The best experience comes from doing just that.

Again, I agree that we could probably add something to make overusing one quest not as useful (i.e. giving farmers like myself leadership positions ), but even then it won't change the fact that you DO have to get use to it, not by just going "Oh well" but expanding what you enjoy to do, and taking in the REST of Lusternia. Stop waiting in line for the overused pony and go ride the merry-go-round, or that rollercoaster (careful, it's a Killer).


(dear LORD! Cwin and David need to be seperated! NOW!! Damn long posts!)



3-5k for most of the ones I know is NOT crud, along with 10%+ karma and a batch of experience.

Your idea is a poor one and does not merit further discussion. If you require an explanation of why you are free to pursue one through alternative avenues, but I advise that you take my word for it.