We'd like feedback on the changes to the Sea Quest as posted in the latest announce. These changes were the result from the special summit we did to address this particular quest. Depending on how successful these changes are, we may have another summit to address the Faethorn Quests.

Lusternia as a whole will be moving away from conflict quests that affect opposing organizations. As players don't appear to enjoy them, we will at the very least look towards softening the impact of the quests.

So... the sea quests do nothing at all now?

What's the point of them?

Other than that, can't really say anything until they actually occur...

- Ladantine will now give hints as to how many devil fish he needs.
Awesome.

- Firefly squid now have a different way of being collected, as well as
having a lower requirement.
Good.

- Ladantine will be easier to spawn.
Delicious.

- Ladantine's fish counter will no longer be reset to zero upon death.
YES.

- The tabernacles, symbols, basin and drums now have a maximum number.
Please note: If the cap is reached, you will still be able to bring in
your required items/mobiles, and it will still gen
WHOOOO!

- The Sea Quests no longer have an effect on spike/supplicant gathering.
In other words, you will always be able to gather spikes/supplicants,
regardless of the status of the Sea Quests.
Yeah... wtf?

So now the Sea Quests are pretty good, way less tedious... but... we have no reason to do them.

Like I said, we are going to be moving away from conflict quests.

You can still do the quests for the RP (or oppose the quests for RP). The major complaint was players being forced into doing the quests and the artificiality of having repetitive conflict which didn't go anywhere. Thus, quests will be quests that you do for their own sake.

Well, that's an interesting approach... hmm. Well, hopefully with the repetitive quest conflict lessened we'll have some more opportunities for dynamic conflict, through one-shot events or the like.

...so, should we next be expecting the Supernals and Demon Lords to not want eachother dead..?

This sounds like going to an extreme, which seems to be the trend. If there's a problem with something, you take it as far in the other direction as you can possibly go.. which is just sort not what the players are actually looking for.

I've been a long-time player, and have foresworn the forums since January, though I'm making a brief return for the sake of this post.

I honestly think the major complaint was being forced into opposition quests that hurt organizations that were seriously imbalanced, or totally pointless.

Organizational opposition was one of the major selling points for Lusternia - the quests, I mean.

Removing these quests leaves us with, what? Raiding one another's territories? Killing Demonlords/Supernals/Avatars that are becoming increasingly more difficult to kill for fear of griefing?

All I see is Lusternia being driven more and more to just be for the sake of RP - and if I just want RP, I'll go play on a MUSH.

So the quest doesn't even give a bonus to either side for being done now?

We'll see how it plays out. I personally don't see the problem with the cosmic planes as of yet. However, we will probably be going in that direction with Faethorn.

Blech. I dislike this. I don't think anyone wanted the effects of the quests to be removed, I think we just wanted them to be less tedious to do.

This also begs the question - why bother lowering the number of supplicants/spikes/shadows/flames if you're going to systematically remove the ability to destroy them, and buff up the demonlords and supernals every time one dies (which seems to be a common trend).

Can Lusternia stop doing everything at once, and start making baby steps, try things out, and not go to extreme measures? I'm honestly getting tired of seeing the things I really love about Lusternia getting butchered because one or two people feel hurt - these changes were great, minus the decision to just start cutting them out.

No offense, but it almost sounds like a school playhouse, where one child feels hurt and says "Fine, NO one can play with my toys," in a hissyfit-like reaction.



I'm going to add my voice to the resounding echo of those whom feel that the RP of Glomdoring and Serenwilde is just getting tossed about for stupid reasons. "Help! SAVE US FROM TAINTED GLOMDORING!" "Glomdoring's not tainted! (minus the Fae who send us pixies begging us to save them from them)" "Maeve: Glomdoring's not tainted, night is the shizzat! Hart: They're still tainted and need to be contained! They can never be saved!" What's next? "Maeve: Oh my god Serenwilde you're such screw ups - we hate you because you're picking on glomdoring so we just won't follow anyone!"

The quests should have SOME affect on the orgs invovled in the quest... Thats whats so cool about Lusternia.

At the risk of being another harping voice, I agree. Part of the cool part of Lusternia is that conflict matters in some way, rather than random raiding and skirmishing. When I play, say, a shooter game, I don't like Call of Duty-style 'kill-count' games. I like the objective-oriented games like Battlefield 2.

Perhaps soften some quests so they're not so influential. But make them so they still have an impact.

While I like most of the things that game with this change, removal of the ability to prevent Spikes/supplicants is now limited to Gorgogs of which would hurt both Cities and any of their novices found in the area. Sea quest was fine when it stopped spike/suplicants, only it could be done far too often that it became tedious to do and the Cities would have no choice but to do them or they run into several problems with Necromantite, Star falling.

(Work damn it!)

I think the honest thing we are looking for was the reduction of some of the difficulty involved in the quests - re-imp the org conflicts associated with the Sea Conflict, and play it by ear?

Hm. Correct, conflict between the orgs is what makes Lusternia what it is. But we have to find a way not to make that conflict tedious... so it's really all or nothing until we can find a way to keep the conflict from going stale, which could be tricky.

I approve. I'd already voluntarily chosen to avoid such quests, but I approve.

They seemed like a good idea on the surface, but a lot of people didn't realize they were leading nowhere, so felt cheated, and the bad blood it caused went way beyond game conflict to profound player burnout.

Truth is, we can't have perma-death for organizations any more than we can have perma-death for individual characters, and that makes it impossible to have such head-to-head quests that carry a real impact without completely rethinking how organizations work.

Speaking of which, two things I think that would facilitate conflict would be

#1) Treating organizations more like communal characters, complete with their own 'score' sheets full of progress counters that any member could access to satisfy himself that things are actually going somewhere. By switching the primary focus from destroying each other to outracing each other ("Serenwilde is 75% to level 622, and ranked #2 among major communities in the basin."), building up our communal skills and abilities ("Serenwilde is now Mythical in the Terraforming, and may create new forest rooms at a cost of 50,000 power each!"; "Serenwilde is now Adept in Military, and can hire Light Cavalry guards."), it would allow players to accomplish tangible progress without constant supervision from the admins.

#2) Colonizing aetherspace, letting communities establish sub-communities in aether bubbles. I've actually got a lot of ideas on what would make viable mechanics, but for now I'm just going to float the concept. Establishing frontier areas could greatly expand the options for conflict without having to impinge directly on the home base communities.

I have nothing to say about the Sea Quests, since I know little about them. But I am definitely going to be at the meeting about Faethorn, if one ends up being held, and I'd like to go on the record as saying I'm deeply disturbed by the idea of the Faethorn quest being rendered impactless. Can't really say more than that till I see what kind of ideas are actually being considered.

I've had a similar idea floating around in my head for ages, but rather than colonizing aetherspace I've been thinking of expansion outside of the Basin. Setting up outposts in the wastelands, fighting off monsters and competing for resources, ect.

#1) Treating organizations more like communal characters, complete with their own 'score' sheets full of progress counters that any member could access to satisfy himself that things are actually going somewhere. By switching the primary focus from destroying each other to outracing each other ("Serenwilde is 75% to level 622, and ranked #2 among major communities in the basin."), building up our communal skills and abilities ("Serenwilde is now Mythical in the Terraforming, and may create new forest rooms at a cost of 50,000 power each!"; "Serenwilde is now Adept in Military, and can hire Light Cavalry guards."), it would allow players to accomplish tangible progress without constant supervision from the admins.


Thats really very cool idea, sadly I think it would need to be done from the start of the game. but I like the idea. I'm sure we can improvise though, by having more things that we can do with power, and just have our power reserves being our "stat sheet"