I think Karma is fine, personally. I don't like the 10 person limit, however and the removal of conflict quests. I also think people would stop fussing if conflict was beefed up off of prime. What if conflict quests were added off prime and had lasting serious effects to ONLY combatants and the cityrank influence skills.

I can understand that and I didnt really take in to consideration those who dont want to die in conflict while they are attempting to do certain things.

However,
The tower thing sounds really cool, And I think making power a sought after commodity is the way to go And making the outer planes important to fighters of lusternia. Make it so that going to raid Nil or Celestia to take down there towers or the supernals/lords is worth the effort, have it actually do something, to the respective organizations, and I think most of the player base is leaning towards the villages. That would be awesome, Having the towers duke it out, or having the help/hinder whoever they are aligned/turned against.

Hmm, I get your reasoning, but still, now that praying got downgraded, couldn't the time you carry suspect be lowered, to like 7 - 10 days? That should be enough time to gain back any experience lost, and stops from really bullying too.

But now to the aetherbubbles idea. I have 3 ideas.

1) Aetherbubble villages: Could be quiet nice, maybe with different ways to sway than prime villages, because all the inhabitants are a bit loco from living in aetherspace.

2) Swayable aetherbubbles: Say, a castle full of lost Tae'dae - knights in the middle of nowhere is discovered, and their king pledges to you if you do this and that (involving traveling all over prime, aetherspace and other planes) and then gives access to a giant canoon that you can use on your enemies or something the like?

3) Aetherbubble outposts: Aetherbubbles devoid of life can be discovered and worked on, by using power, commodities and maybe other things, buildings can be made, new NPCs could be bought, like a trader or something, and so on and so on.

I really dislike this suggested focus on aetherbubbles, personally.

Well, it's more creative than a new place suddenly appearing out of nowhere. The only other real way it could be extended would be into "out of the basin"

I don't like the idea of a aetherbubble focus either.

Regarding aetherbubbles, my thought would be that any citizen/member of a city/commune could immediately transport over to their aetherbubble via the nexus. However, enemies would have to make a short excursion into aetherspace to attack at that bubble. Thus, there could be fighting in aetherspace over the dock points as well as fighting in the bubble itself.

Sounds good to me Estarra. I would love working on a Celest bubble that could be attacked by other Orgs. It allows people that want conflict to go there and get it, but leaves novices and other that may not want to participate out of it since it not a direct attack on the city.

I'm the one who proposed the idea Veonira's talking about, so go ahead and bask me in praise. Or something. Ahem.

Aaanyway, here's the idea I had for how it would work between Celest and Magnagora. Essentially, the quests would capture the struggle between the light and the taint for supremacy of the basin, with each side working to tilt the scales in their favour. Each successive quest by one side would be more difficult, complex, and dangerous than the last. For example, let's say Celest were to go all out and manage to achieve a partial cleansing of Magnagora. It would then take an enormous effort on the part of the Celestians to extend their influence even further into the earth plane, whereas the Magnagorans will have a definite home-turf advantage granted in their counterquesting.

The quest cycle would begin with the current sea battle quests. With the Inner Sea clean and the SoD tainted, the taint and light are at neutral status - a standstill. Once either side wins the sea battle and raises Mary or Ladantine, the balance shifts. The opposing counterquest opens - in this case, the quest to kill Mary and either a quest or some other means to prevent Celest for preceeding to their second tier quest. Should Celest achieve their second tier quest their first tier (The Sea Quest) will be unreversable until they've been brought back down to that level, to prevent 'skipping' over levels.

So, let's say Celest manages to complete the requirements for their tier II quest (or quests). The cleansing of the Sea of Despair becomes complete. Spectres go (maybe), Ladantine can no longer create sea wolves (they die upon exposure to the cleansed water), and his anti-Marilynth potion can no longer be made. The denizens of the Sea of Despair become different things - perhaps Devil Fish become Anglers, ect. If Ladantine dies, he's dead for good until this portion of the quest is reversed. Of course, now Magnagora's tier II counterquests are opened up to allow them to weaken the light's grip on the Inner sea, bringing them back down to tier I and allowing the slaying of Marilynth. Meanwhile Celest can work to extend their cleansing into Magnagora's western shore, creating negative effects on the city (power loss, some rooms not tainted, ect.). This will be harder to achieve than the last tier, and the next one even harder - this way the balance will rarely tend towards extremes that cripple either city, except in extroadinary circumstances, in which case the counterquests become simpler to pull off, meaning the 'victory' will be short-lived.

That's just my basic outline. Thoughts?

I REALLY like this idea. Especially combined with what Estarra said, how people from a city/commune could easily travel to their bubble, but other people would have to travel out to it.

However, as much as I love aether bubble ideas, I still think the other planes need to have more added to them as well.



Oh please. Everyone at that summit took the idea and ran with it, I just summarized everyone's ideas all put together.

No, it really was me that proposed it...

I Veonira and Guido.

I believe you, but I'm just saying, other people helped, including Vesar, and Anja I believe, and such .

Good, good, now comment on my ideas.

Well, you wouldn't want to cripple the other city too much, or otherwise the 'simple' counter quests could be a lot harder to do...

Also, would the quests be different for each org (i.e.- Serenwilde starts to make Mag a commune, or Celest returns Mag to normal, or Glomdoring makes Magnagora wyrded, with different quests for each process)?

I absolutely love this idea of having a series of long, complicated quests that would permanently, and eventually devastatingly affect opposing organizations. However, keep in mind that anything that the players consider "grinding" makes them whine. A lot.

I think that the ultimate reward should be really extreme. Magnagora should be able to completely taint Celest, and maybe even gain control over the city. Not the shops and the news boards or anything, but at least the physical city. Slay the guards, replace them with Magnagora guards, and auto-enemy any current citizen. Maybe pollute the Pool of Stars and drain 50k power, or something ridiculous like that.

I also think that this is something that should probably not happen to real life years. If it never comes up at all, that would be okay. But Celest's quests should remain fairly easy as Magnagora's get progressively harder and harder. There should also be a time delay of a couple days while the quests are frozen between each tier. So if Magnagora wins, then both sides get a break for a day or two. Maybe have a smaller counter-quest to help alleviate the effects without restarting the cycle back to tier 1. So if at tier 2, Celest has killed Ladatine and destroyed the spectres, Magnagora could bring back the spectres, but still have the rest of the SoD unTainted.

Like I said, it shouldn't be something that would feasibly happen any time soon, and I'm not sure if my ideas would help keep everything balanced.

By the bye, I love you Guido.

Wow, some really good ideas here. I love the thought of power-created advantages that give slight tangible benefits to an organization, and can be removed - towers gets the

Same with the idea of aetherbubble outposts that can be colonized, like a higher-level version of village influencing. Brilliant.

I'm not so fond of quests which gradually overcome another organization, I think this is the sort of thing that causes frustration and angst when you are forced to constantly counterquest to prevent your org from 'losing'. Raiding and characters taking extreme risks to individually attack/raid another org are one thing... quests which can be done in relative anonymity and with patient inevitability are more of a problem.

As for combat on prime, I really would like it to be readjusted once more. I'm aware that increasing the possibility of PK is going to dissuade some people from the game, but as others have said, so will leaving it in this PK vacuum. My concern is not so much that fighting opportunities are too few (if people really want to fight, they can organize duels/raids in the planes already), but rather that there is a lot of realism and immersion that is lost because of the heavy dampening of any fights in 'the real world' of the Basin.

Prime is where regular, day to day life happens. It is in this world that conflict should feel a part of your existence, where you are responsible for your actions and your words. While almost completely safe inside the borders of your home territory, venturing outside means that you are entering the dangerous world of Lusternia, where you are still protected by your allies and by the Avenger, but not completely.

When was the last time guild champions actually had to worry about making sure their charges were safe? I'm not entirely sure, but I doubt they are free to take reprisal for unprovoked attacks on their wards either, there's little point when suspect status is already better than whatever they can do.

Realism and immersion are worthy goals, but you're overlooking the fact that taking perma-death out of the equation changse the social dynamic on all levels of in-game existence. It removes the most fundamental check against an endless cycle of conflict: the one where people who are irrationally violent soon lose the ability to be irrationally violent, or to be anything else but dead, for that matter.

On MUD after MUD after MUD, the player base has proved itself unable to compensate for the loss of that natural limitation, and either the admins step in and add limitations of their own, or the game becomes nothing but one huge arena, with the people who'd like to take time out for some more sedate role-play going off to seek their fix elsewhere.

I know many of you hate the whole Karma and Declaration system, but I personally have never seen a less invasive compromise established anywhere. I keep hearing "Lusternia is all about conflict!", but if that were true, there would be no rules about maintaining IC atmosphere. Conflict is just one facet of a more comprehensive virtual world.

And as for the "heavy dampening of any fights in 'the real world' of the Basin," that's easy for established players to complain about, but what about the new blood? Is every new player supposed to either suck it up or be consigned to role-play limbo until he reaches level 50?

Lusternia's got different layers of conflict going on. Newton for newbies, where it almost doesn't happen; Within the major communities, where it only happens on special ocassions; within the villages, where it happens now and then; and extra-planar, where it's violence on demand. The more layers, the more easily Lusternia can accomodate diversity in the player base, and the larger its potential audience becomes. The more layers it collapses, the further it will be forced into a niche market.

The answer isn't to make the civilized areas of the game more violent. It's to make the frontier areas more important.

Since I mentioned the tower, I'll elaborate on my original thought.

The idea for a tower came from something I was working on as one of my (sadly not yet completed) ideas for books. I had written up an engineering theories of the old days and the idea I had was for something akin to Nikola Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower. It would be something that could be bought with power and then used as a weapon or a special effect. I envisoned a weapon that could be similar to the Killing Moon or Thunderclap--it could be aimed at a specific area (slowly) and then fires a powerful weapon. Maybe it could damage another community's shield.

Balancing this could be problematic. There are a few ideas for this.

* It costs power to build--say 10000 power.
* It costs power to maintain--say 100 power per minute. Maybe the longer it is in existence the more power it needs, so to prevent it from being "on" too much. Like each half hour real-time double the cost.
* It costs power to use each attack--say 2500 power per attack. The attack is very powerful however.

Feel free to increase or decrease the numbers.

This would force economic costs and prevent it from being used every single minute. You'd definately want it to be possible to raid the tower and not be an impossible task. You could make these so special that they can only be summoned once a real month or something. You don't want the artifact in the middle of a city or commune or protected with shrines.

Other ideas that could be used in place of a weapon.

A Monument that can be summoned and set to afflict one community. The communties members are afflicted with insanity akin to Astral (with a faster onset time), along with Dementia, Hallucinations, and other afflictions. The victims need to journey to the monument and defeat it. (This would be a time-based cost).

A Menhir that summons powerful forces and sends them off to war. The gate spawns powerful beasts that can raid an area. Others have to close the gate by attacking it and destroying it. (Power cost would be based on time plus number of creatures spawned, and possibly where you create it).

Basically, the idea would be something that would only be used for key strategic needs. Let's say somebody really wants to free Ankrag from Magnagora (like Serenwilde)...during the next influence, the Menhir is summoned outside ankrag and the beasts raid the locale. The Serenwilde might have used, say, 1/3rd of power to get it when the battle ends, but it's a key victory that they can celebrate.

These are just ideas...feel free to critique as needed.

ohmigosh so much love for lots of ideas.

I think that in addition to what Phred said (if anything like that is used) situational tools should be used - for example, perhaps Celest could set up a cleansing apparatus outside of Angkrag to suck the taint out of the ground? Or they could send a large water generator to flood an area. Stuff like that.

Anyway, lots of <3 for pretty much everything here.