Yeah that is great. If that is your logic Daxera, we should all swap cities and see how you fare with raising Ladantine over and over again.

Anyways, I agree it is much more difficult to raise Ladantine. When this was brought up before, they said it would be fixed. All that may have changed was that Ladantine was stronger and we still have to collect an insane amount of fish each time he dies. So to make him stronger still is stupid unless you give him Aspect style strength and have him cause afflictions and chase you around the sea... now that would be neat. Hell I would even try to kill him just to see how bad ass he is then.

I remember in the very earliest days of Lusternia when, while I was still carefully mapping Serenwilde, I was hearing about people who'd found Glomdoring and, while mapping it, were getting the first clues that there was a quest there that had to do with the things I'd read about in the history, a quest that could change the world; and I thought, wow, that's just amazing. That there are things that complex, that much mystery to be unfurled, linked to the histories. How can they ever keep up with that?

In the music industry there's something called "sophomore slump". It refers to how a lot of bands put out amazing debut albums, but few artists can make their second album come anywhere near matching. It's easy to see why: your first album is the best work you picked out of a whole career of stuff done beforehand. Your second album is what you could put together quickly while touring, combined with some of the bits that didn't make the cut for the first album.

I think Lusternia has that problem. The world we started on day one of the game had literally months, years, of dedicated development, undistracted by admin and bugfixing, behind it, things carefully built and complex and interconnected, then slowly, teasingly revealed. The most amazing thing being that you could do a quest that literally changed the world. And all of it full of mystery.

But nowadays village revolts and conflict quests are not only old hat -- they are desperately tedious, and lots of people resent being forced to play them out. Everyone knows them all by heart. Everytime someone does one, it doesn't change the world at all; all it does is force someone else to play out by rote the counterquest, and then resent that they are stuck doing that instead of something they wanted to be doing.

That's why the admin can look at people's comments and feel damned if they do, damned if they don't, that no matter what they ask there's as many answers for as against. I think a lot of people still love those very quests that they now resent. They love when they were new and mysterious and changed the world; and they resent how now, they're just chores, devoid of fun and mystery and impact on the world.

It was probably never feasible to sustain the level of those early days. You could never run the game so that it was always possible to uncover some new mystery that changed the world, and by the time it felt routine, there was something new so it never got rote and burdensome. You couldn't keep replacing the conflict quests with new quests of similar scale. I think there's been some effort to ratchet down from those early world-changing days to something more sustainable; but that that effort has been erratic and unfocused, and nowhere near systemic enough to address the problem.

What I think is needed is to tone down conflict itself until you get to a point where it no longer depends on anything which is so old and well-known that it feels like a burden. Then crank conflict back up slowly, to a level that your development (building, etc.) resources can keep up with, so that every conflict is built on something new, or at least not old. It won't be like those first days of Lusternia any more than each new album by an established artist is that chart-shattering all-new smash hit that their first album was, but it'll be sustainable and consistently interesting.

That would require a real serious stepping back and reconsideration of the design at a basic level: not of the world, but of the story and the game's style.

We don't own the catacombs.... Here, just to be nice why don't we let you bash out all the garshades on the first level... just those though. Then you can have fun with lifeleech too.

Or even something a *little* easier for those who aren't mages or knights and have laughable health.

Uhhh... yeah. That's why I was killed twice there and jumped and killed twice two hours later. EDIT: The second time was while I was on astral...

@Shorlen in regards to Hostile quests going on nad off.

Ahh, ok, wierd, I read what Estarra wrote in teh opposite, that the Quests work unless there is mutual agreement for them to not work. I.e. a signed peace treaty.

That is because we love you. That and you probably pissed off Murphy or Ixion again somehow.

That idea, I see as rather worthless, because if the two cities want peace, they can have peace. There shouldn't be a need for mechanics to regulate a mutal decision for peace. What Estarra was suggesting was that one side could determine if they were at peace with their enemies or not, which I believe is a very dangerous, abusable, and unrealistic approach that will lead to childish handling of the situation. "Our fighters are all logged off, so we're at peace, but once they log on, we'll be at war again!" and the like. Or "Daevos and Murphy are taking a romantic cruise through the Sea of Despair, we'll be at peace until they get back since they are our best fighters" - and the like.

Or Ixion just doesn't want to see me get close to Titan.

End hijack.



Anyhow. More bashing areas. And less minigame-type stuff (village influencing).

And more bug fixes. Seems like they hang around longer then they should.

Personally, what I'd love more was a place somewhere that we could read up on what was fixed recently It's only possible to tell if some deadly bugs are still there or not by trial and error.

Kallodan, Shamarah, Narsrim, Kaervas , have all proven that it doesn't matter what the leadership says they want, there will always be "rogue" people who mess it up.

All it takes is one person with too much time on thier hands to do a quest that everyone else says isn't allowed to be done.

Everything in Lusternia is reinforce by mechanics, save peace treaties. This would be a way to fix that, and then Diplomacy could probably become a reality in Lusternia. Because right now it isn't.

Yeah I feel bad for you and that wierdo dreamweaving bug.... Maybe someone can tell us if it is actually fixed or if it will come back up in like say 2 days time to kill Shorlen again.

Perhaps a time between changing the status shorlen?

Like you can declare peace or hostility but it's in effect for a full year. If both sides take an opposite decision, the can change their mind.

So Mag declares hostility
Celest declares peace

either side can change their mind, until they do the sea quest will run it's course for either side.

Celest declares hostility and until either side declares peace the sea quest returns to it's current state.

Mag and Celest declare peace, and the sea quest becomes inactive.

?

More bashing grounds would be great. I can occasionally grab two spawns of gorgogs, but only because I spore in and out all the time or stand around harvesting/replanting reishi.

It was fixed very quickly, but that doesn't change the fact that it has come and gone twice in the two weeks I've been a dreamweaver

Alright, didn't read everything, but...here are my demands.

1) The communes need a way to get essence. Sure, I love Earth as a bashing ground...but the Mags are rightfully anal about me taking 'their' essence. So, a commune source of essence...maybe an ethereal wilderness? That make any sense? There'd be;

Etherwilde
-
Faethorn - Ethereal Wilderness
-
Etherglom

There'd be creepy 'wild' fae or something in the wilderness, about on par with elemental monsters, and they'd drop essence. Handy dandy! Problem solved. Me likes this idea.

2) Just adding my vote for more potential city/commune conflict. Everything's been said already.

3) Less ethereal invincibility. I know it just means Etherglom will be raped, but then I could rape Etherwilde back. And the cities could stop whining.

4) Some way that totems could vaguely begin to match up to statues - I don't know how.

EDIT: 5) Yes, please do bring back some form of Hart/Crow conflict, though not as extreme as before.

Yes, even out totems and statues. We gain power, but our defenses are total jank in comparison to statues.

A nuetral organization.