Scrap half the Alabaster . No other org has to deal with a neutral ground running right through them, making it only about 6 rooms to Mother if they leave the road at the right place. I'm pretty sure there's about 30 rooms to get to the Master in Glom. Someone can easily waltz right up there without attracting to much attention, and half of Magnagora could just Via in and blitz their way through.

Random wishes from a relative newbie.

1) It would be really, really nice to have the History of the Elder Wars somewhere close to completed, and more events/places/things relating to Basin history to pop up. I am story whore. Feed me.

2) I wholeheartedly agree that more bashing areas are necessary. Ackleberry Forest might be a good one for a large, neutral (if temporarily) and flavorful setting. The Fire/Air/Continuum/Vortex idea with the two cities doesn't sound bad at all either. Although I'd imagine Gaudiguch would be getting smacked about six different ways straight from the beginning... I don't quite understand why there's no love for big, fire-breathing dragon-things.

3) Oh. Right. Minor race balance of some sort, please? Tae'dae probably need one, Viscanti, Dracnari, and Dwarf are the others I've heard complaints about...

4) I'd like to see some progress made in the quest for ascension... let people discover what's necessary to raise a Vernal, first of all, and then maybe find some way to fill us all in on the whole Ascended God thing. Maybe have that be a huge Basin-wide event, complete with Divine interference (because I don't imagine all of the Elders are thrilled at the concept of having some random mortal joining their ranks... never mind one of those with a prior history of being difficult.)

5) Revamp the demigod system and benefits. It seems more like a punishment than a reward for reaching that level. Making Phoenix optional, or just reducing the absolutely heinous essence drop might do something. And some new abilities couldn't hurt much, either.

Estarra is working on the Elder histories - trust us, we're pushing her to write them faster, too! We like reading them as much as you do.

More areas are nice, but...that means they need to be built, and Estarra has already commented on that.

Envoys is going over balances, at one point, it would seem logical races will be looked at, as well.
That, and what would an Elder care about a Vernal? They're just slightly stronger monkeys. (Or fish, bovine, etcetera, etcetera.) That, and it would have to be exceedingly rare in general, not to mention any Vernal made would be severely restricted in many ways, such as rarely being able to participate in fights. And, they'll be about when the game is ready for them, obviously. Right now, there are more important things to finish and get in.

Roark and Estarra have been working on Demigods and titans - they've been doing it with the envoys, remember? A few changes have already been implemented, no reason not to expect a few more.

1) A think-tank to produce the specific ideas.

2) An actual Age of Ascension. Right now we just have ever-quitting demigods produced by treadmilling. Or you could just rewrite the tagline.

I only read the first post. I have no specific suggestions, in a traditional sense, but I'd like to express what I and many others I have spoken with are feeling about Lusternia.

Lusternia is becoming boring and pointless. There is nothing to do. The main draw and focal point of the game is conflict, however there is a total lack of it. The only conflict that exists is so repetitive and trite that no one finds it interesting anymore - it is also impossible for any one organization to gain the upper hand, as you cannot strike a significant blow against any other organization. The sea quests, raiding Nil/Celestia, trying to control Faethorn, village influence, gaining power... it all means so very little, and after so long it has become boring.

The staff's only answer to this increasing stagnation and lack of interest is more areas, pointless skillsets/features, and other additions that add absolutely no depth to the game. More honours quests, things to bash, and skillsets to learn only occupy us briefly before the old, boring nothingness returns. They are temporary remedies at best.

In order for Lusternia to be actually fun again it requires serious revamping. I daresay several aspects to the game need to be completely overhauled. The story needs to become the main focus - dynamic and interesting events with player-influenced outcomes that affect the world - none of this BS like the last event Serenwilde had. "Okay, event's over, break the treaty!". Or the introduction of the wyrd. Or anything. None of them have any affect on the game - they come, shit happens, then we're back where we started with a shiny new quest for Exarius to whore. I came here to be part of the best story I've ever seen written for a MUD, but nothing has been done to advance that story save for a bit of Elder Wars history and some vague backstory for the cities and communes.

May not seem like it, but we do love You all lots for allowing us to give our opinions on things such as this.

Yes, this sums it up.

(Bellator Societas): You say, "OMFG."

(Bellator Societas): You say, "YESSSSS."

(Bellator Societas): Lyco says, "Zomg."

(Bellator Societas): Iblis says, "Thank ."

(Bellator Societas): Daevos says, "..."

(Bellator Societas): Kissos says, "ROFL."

(Bellator Societas): Athana says, "OMG!"

(Bellator Societas): Ixion says, "..."

(Bellator Societas): Athana says, "THANK GOD."

Ooh, heres something everyone who cant really hunt off Prime would like. Give Astral money again..please..or maybe have someone of the Cosmic Planes want to buy them.

What does "affect the world" mean?

Most of the time, it has been the players who refuse to accept changes to the game world.

I wish people would be more clear as to what they envision could be happening but isn't.

Yeah, I've suggested that before. Apparently there's no time to write up such things.

I agree with Exarius' statement elsewhere about "making your own fun", because he's right about the whole thing. Players should be more involved in making some storylines themselves.

I also agree with Gwylifar about players getting Jaded. Lusternia was "Fresh and New" to some, but a lot of people got jaded and a bit cynical about it. I'm actually viewing what former god Hajamin is doing with his new MUD, and I'm saying to myself "all these people going there looking for something 'new' who have complaints about Lusty are going to be griping about that MUD in a year or two once the novelty wears off".

Players forget that MUDs tend to be self-sustatining after a while via quests and the like. While Divine interaction is great, it also can't be done as often and affecting everbody.

I definately agree about the storyline. However, not having much time in other IRE MUDs, do the others "expand the storyline" better than here? Or are you holding Lusternia to a "higher standard".

I'm just curious. Maybe I just don't play the game as often enough to get any sense of jadedness.

In the other IRE games, you can't really hurt another org, you can only RP it with politics.

I think that is the main difference, so allegances shift back and forth between different orgs freely, based on RP and a few fights between people, because its all moral and politics, and no hard coded results.

What would I like to see most?

New events that promote development of culture in each organization WITHOUT revolving around the relationship with another org.

I want to see Faethorn's RP repaired, and I plan to submit a plot suggestion soon.

I'd like to see Glomdoring have a few more events that promote the development of their culture independent of Serenwilde - more examples of how they can dominate the fae into improving the health of their forest, more examples of how unWyrded environments are utterly inferior for their purposes. No more events that are designed to 'prove' to Serenwilde how they should be buddies. Similarly I'd like to see Serenwilde have SOME sort of purpose reestablished, that isn't peurile and small-minded. I'd like to see some mysticism reestablished, not torn down and demonstrated to be flawed. I'd like to see their uniqueness emphasised, particularly to Glomdoring... who should be encouraged to start viewing Serenwilde with at least derision if not hostility.

I'd really, really like to see potential events that affect more than one organization be reviewed by a panel of Gods to make sure that patron bias doesn't skew the progress of the event to one side's detriment. I don't know if this has happened before, but it often seems like it.

I wish Glomdoring could be reinstituted with the role it had at the end of the histories and before it was a commune, even though I know it won't happen. If I could point to the one thing that has caused me the most loss of enjoyment in Lusternia, it is Glomdoring. Everything I found exciting, unique, epic, fun and engaging about my character has been watered down, removed, duplicated or corrupted (in the sense of changing what it was). There have been a few half-hearted attempts to help - Elcyrion's development of a more unique culture for the Hartstone (that joyously didn't involve Glomdoring at all) - but they are few and far between.

Generally, I hope to eventually see more admin again. I'd like to see them give event balancing, RP, and story development the same attention that combat balancing has. I'd like to see existing areas/quests/skillsets/minigames made as close to perfect as possible before embarking on new expansions - aim for retaining interest using what is here, rather than constantly adding flashy new additions that only attract for a few days while they are new and exciting.

I'd love the world summits occuring rarely, or even just some other route along which feedback and responses from the admin can be passed back and forth.

I think Lusternia is by far the best MUD out there, but there is still so much potential to make it better.


Edit: And I have to agree with Guido's comments. Allowing conflict to occur outside of repetitive and horribly artificial means would be a great investment in retaining players.

Disclaimer: This is based on my entirely biased perspective, as someone who only had one serious character in one House in Achaea, and one serious character in one guild in Lusternia. I could be overgeneralising. Your own mileage may vary. And now, my two cents...

I really feel sorry for the admin, who've put in a tremendous amount of work to create a world with a lot of depth, a lot of conflict, and a lot of conflict that can actually impact one's opponents, and have worked a lot on moving the story forward and altering game mechanics to keep things in motion.

The result is that players have gotten used to the admin being the only engine driving the plot.

Now, before coming to Lusternia, I used to play Achaea. Though I understand it's reviving now, large-scale overt conflict had almost totally died down by the time I left, because there were more incentives to keeping peace between organisations, than incentives to go to war. People are complaining about lack of Divine interaction here? Woo, you've gotta be kidding. There was far, far less there. The "plot" hadn't really been advanced by the admin in any way in ages. There were fewer events, a lower ratio of denizens speaking up to players, no new major historical developments in RL years.

This is not a criticism. The world was interesting, and made so because, the admin having set a complex stage, players took much more initiative. There was diplomacy, there were secret treaties, backstabbing, conspiracies, ritual work, "scholarly research," "historical discoveries", and so forth...

I find there's much less of that in Lusternia. Organisations aren't willing to move forward or develop their RP independently. They form dogmas and defend them, and complain when the admin try to shake things up. People want to see histories written for them, but won't take a guess or theorise about them themselves. I've seen little by way of RP traditions developed without admin input. (One of the things I like about Glomdoring is how much independent RP development it's done.)

In Achaea, if we'd waited for the admin to supply us with novel RP directions... we would've had to wait a loooooong time. So we used to invent history all the time, or do "experiments", or run rituals, and pray and hope that one day, some admin would take a hand in it - which they occasionally did, and it was always very rewarding to see *your own initiative, and your own work* pay off. Honestly, the admin here seem much more responsive to that sort of thing. If people ran their own events more frequently, I'd bet you'd see denizens answering, effects occurring, and so forth, with good frequency. (By the by - Viravain for sprucing up a standard liturgy we held in Glomdoring a couple of days ago.)

In conclusion, kudos to our incredibly devoted and active admin. I think you're doing a wonderful job. I also we the players ought to take a bigger part in moving the story forward and holding our own events, and not expect most everything major to occur by Divine intervention. To my mind, the ideal would be to see players develop new directions for RP, and the admin facilitate our ideas, because RPing a script someone hands down to us does inevitably get stale, and we'll soon be asking for the next new thing again.

Desire one fufilled! HOORAY!

can we move the wildnoes forward about 4 hours as an aside? I have to be up at 6am to participate

No no, wildnodes doesn't need to be MOVED, it needs to be RANDOMISED.

It can still have system warnings a month or two in advance, or whatever, but it being at 10PM every day before I even wake up is just horrible because it's like that -every time-. No event that affects cities and communes like that should be banned to certain timezones.

People talk about world-shattering events. I'm not so much interested in those.

I'm more interested in little things, like when Ephemerals or Admins take over denizens. You know, once in a while, have the denizens say hello or say something interesting, respond to interaction. Everiine's been trying to talk to the Centaur for years, with no luck. I know others have tried similar things, and it would be really fun if once in awhile, RP things with denizens paid off.

Just my two cents.

No, it's not unbeatable. You're just fighting a retarded enemy that hasn't come up with trebuchets yet.

Ahem.

Back on topic, I'd very much like to see new skills, archetypes and areas - But what I fear needs to be done is a reworking of the way organizational conflict works in Lusternia. The world is very well developed and when I was reading the stories and just starting out, it seemed amazingly dense - To a certain extent, it still does. But repetitive, pointless quests and village influences make it seem paper-thin. Organizational conflict isn't part of the story, it's just a lot of competitions on who has more people online at the time, with an outcome that is utterly meaningless. The system needs to be reviewed and completely redone, because right now, it's not working, and it's the biggest source of frustration in the game. I don't mean patching it up with something like sanctuaries or peaced influences, I mean rethinking the whole thing.

Oh, and Aetherships should matter. Right now they don't. They should.