Combat requires REAL time and experience. I think that is what makes it good. I can't play a mud that doesn't have a combat system without balances, and that allows you to auto kill things. Because I've been spoiled by the IRE combat style.

Personally, I like group combat better, because each person only has to do a few simple things, but the group as a whole has to work together better.

And the investment required to be a top fighter is HUGE. Not in money, but in time. You can spend $15,000 on items and skills, and still lose in most fights.

I found the overwhelming-ness of IRE combat options a huge draw-in. But the affliction system itself was a drawback. I really dislike that you need a trigger system to fight, especially one-on-one (I wonder what you mean by "not having a system at all", Shamarah. Even having a simple one or tons of curing aliases counts in my book). On the other hand, group combat tends to be unfair because the larger group tends to win, but has much less strict requirements both on skills (a noob can be of help) and system.

Short version: do I like combat in Lusternia? No. I liked winning and the adrenaline rush (which happened even when losing, so I guess losing was fun for me - sometimes), but I don't like the combat itself. It's better than kill-wait served by Diku-likes, but still inherently flawed in my book.

After being gone a long time I've lost the ability to keep track of all the information that flies by in a fight. The text will start whooshing by and I'll be completely unable to see what's happening until it slows down which of course means I'm dead and have been rezzed and have been holding a novice quiz for some time.

I hate demesnes too. I've never been good with classes that require you to rely on room effects. In Achaea my time as a mage was just miserable because I couldn't really move from one place. Priest was as much of a compromise as I could tolerate.

Also, too many people (in every commune/city) want to make every individual fight into org fighting. Then there's the fact that there really aren't many fighters. Lusternia is pretty small and a good many people don't fight. I know who my opponents would be and that's enough to make me not interested.

Last thing, as with most any game the fighters tend to do a lot of trash-talking and its asanine and stupid.

For people who aren't happy with Lusternia combat, what would make it better?

Things like "make it better RP" don't count much, I mean real practical improvements that would help.

Balance combat for group combat and redesign the game engine for group combat, or remove the emphasis on inter-org group combat.

Not going to happen, I know, but it would help

I find the system inherently flawed (only my opinion). Matt said himself he based it on two things:
1. Afflictions and how well you can heal them
2. Outspeeding the enemy's healing/curing with your own afflictions and damage (I'd prefer a "wound stays for the entire duration of a fight" approach, where you can't simply remove all your ailements in one second - they'd be on the other hand more difficult to stick in, too)

So, my opinion on how to make this system better? You can't. You can only make it more balanced but it will still be as wizards in DnD - flawed, in my opinion.

I stress out in my opinion, because I'm sure there's a lot of people who find systems like this to be very appealing. Well, I'm not them.

I loved the Lusternian combat mechanics. What I disliked was how little 1v1 fighting I could actually do. Most 1v1 fights will quickly result in one or both parties calling more people in, or else in an inter-organisational incident. You can't really fight private battles, which let you take full advantage of the intricacies of the combat system, and group combat's much more likely to be about which side can smoosh the other first.

I'm not sure I understand why people say there's little RP involved, when the abilities are so beautifully written out and so wonderfully appropriate to each class. A Blacktalon gets to blight the land with plagues of locusts and peck people's eyes out; a Celestine gets to call down holy Inquisition. What part of that's not RP?


Not everyone has the time or talent to write out volumes for the library system or for Bardics, or to create performances or rituals or make designs. This is the case with almost every aspect of the IRE games. Be it combat, writing, politics, a trade, holding rituals/performances, IC scholarship - any form of specialisation will take a lot of time and committment. You can't complain that you're not winning Bardics if you don't put in the time to write, and you can't complain that you're getting slaughtered when you're not putting in the time to prep for combat.

The initial barrier for getting into combat isn't all that high. When all I had was Ethelon's free system, lvl 60 and one Fabled skill and negligible others, I was having a lot of fun already, and I picked up the rest of my credits and training by doing other things I enjoyed in game. If any of it is a chore - reconsider what you're trying to get out of the game.

I have a bunch of aliases for my cures, a hodgepodge mass of triggers that would make Lovecraft recoil in horror (I don't even keep track of herb balance or aeon), and a few timers to keep track of my angel and inquisition. That's it. I tend to do most of my curing manually; my triggers pick up some of the stuff that would screw me over if I couldn't react fast enough to it, but I do a lot of it manually (when I get aeoned I usually just turn off triggers and deal with it manually).

No one is complaining. This is a thread about combat. There is no falsehood to anything you've said, and there is no falsehood to anything I've said. Combat involves a serious time committment.

I didn't mean to come off argumentative, that's just a natural talent. I did mean that people tend to underestimate how much time investment other game aspects take. There's just much less room to get "casually" involved in combat. Someone with few skills who spars once in a while and helps defend falls in that category, but you don't really get to enjoy the best aspects of it, then.

Alternative credit income helps too And being online 2 days out of the week.

I'm not crazy about combat, myself. I find it rather tedious, and only participate because it helps Celest. Just feels like most of it is the same thing over and over and over until one of the groups is gone.

hrm, Lusternia's combat system is imho to much reliant on a client with a system, at times it is more bug testing then game. But then for fighting I prefer graphical mmorpgs and mmofps (for those interrested EQ2 and planetside).

Good thing lusternia has rp, and politics (oddly enough I extremely dislike RL politics)

personally combat is probably the thing i most enjoy in lusternia, however i have to say the thing that has kept me coming back is the people ive met and spoken to for so long, most of you are amazing.

Sadly lots of silimaurs old friends have left and thus ive lost the drive to come in and help so havent been around much lately.

It kind of gets me down if I enter a room, someone jumps me, and from that point until I die, I'm stuck, whatever skills they're using no matter how fast I cure I can't manage to leave or fight back, it sort of sucks that one wrong move, or not mashing an alias fast enough messes you up. Whoever has the faster connection shouldn't matter when it's just .2 or .3 seconds difference, but it does. Heck in villages, some people's connections are so fast even if you initiate two commands at once "open door east;east" they'll close it before you get to it.

But if you hold enter on zmud, they'll lag eventually

that is a handy little scroll. I wish I had found it earlier I had no idea it existed until I had figured out most of it on my own and come up with my own pattern, which I still use mostly. Hard to break old habits

And ild, do you have the logs for that merkada/me vs you fight? I don't remember it, but would like to go over the logs if you still have 'em

Firstly IRE combat is hugely anti-roleplay.

This is because it is based on ooc systems: The affliction-based nature requires complex systems, triggers, aliases, macros. It is based on might rather than experience, i.e. how many credits you have bought.

It's far more about how good the 'player' is at combat, rather than the 'character'.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing. It prevents IRE games from being pure role-playing games, but that was never the intention. The complex nature of combat in IRE games is its own attraction, and I think any attempt to try and somehow make combat more 'RP' friendly is pointless.

However, the very complexity that attracts the top-level fighters is what makes it hard for anyone with a casual interest to take part.

Can that be fixed? Not simply, no.
But is there any reason to fix it?

Combat can be fun for those who are starting out, while it is all still new and exciting, or while they are fighing someone around their own might. Fighting someone with a half made curing system just as bad as yours can be a lot of fun. Fighting someone with a good curing system, that pushes you to get better is also a lot of fun.

Now, to address the topic's question: Is Lusternia combat fun?

I'm sad to say, that mostly it just isn't anymore. Pretty much the only combat I get to see is groups raiding, and I get to participate in group vs group (or group vs me). And really, dying to groups of people who could have killed me individually gets old very quickly.

However, that's not so much the fault of the IRE combat system (or Lusternia's in particular) as the org vs. org culture that Lusternia promotes... my perception is that Lusternia is the game for group vs group combat. As such, I'm really finding no incentive to participate in combat here.

I have been playing another IRE game for a little while now, and in 1/10th of the time that I have spent on Lusternia, I have already had far more 1 vs. 1 fights.

Does Lusternia need to change? I'm not sure. Maybe we just need to accept that this is the game for org vs. org conflict and those of us that want little 1 vs. 1 skirmishes, should get our combat elsewhere?

Thoughts?

I think it might just be an issue that can't be solved (Shorlen's post covers part of what I think is the problem but I don't really enjoy solo combat either for reasons someone else I can't be bothered looking up posted) because the way a MU* works requires comrpomises that detract too much from any kind of tactical fighting. Has anyone played any other text-based games and found combat (solo or group) there more fun, out of curiosity?

Ahah, I remembered part of what I was going to say yesterday; I was talking to Alger about this a year or so ago. It seems like a lot of Lusternia fights are predetermined, or at least the factors that result in the winner aren't the ones I'd like them to be. Now I'll give that, just like in MTG which I've been comparing it to, you can influence a lot of those factors -before- the battle (making your system better/using someone else's, getting the right skills, calling for backup vs. making your deck less sucky) but it still doesn't lead to the kind of open-ended game of strategy I'd be looking for. Maybe that explains it a little better.

Personally? Combat is one of the things that kept me in Lusternia when I came back. Group combat, single combat- I learned on my own, textbook studying of cures, no system, asking questions wherever I could. I learned from the ground up, it kept me distracted, I didn't have to invest a huge amount of credits to be decent at it. I still love it. Group combat, and some unbalanced (I.E: Ixion killing me with one hunting rapier..) single combat can be frustrating, yeah. If I'm jumped, I shrug it off. If I'm jumped 1 vs. 1, win or lose, I take what I can from it: find some new things to sub, echo, add to my mental healing priorities.

I -do- hate when combat turns into a big 'My epeen > yours' sort of thing on forums.

Edit: Though, I found myself typing 'gseal' over and over lately, from fighting so much in both Achaea and Lusternia.

Short answer: No, not for me.

Long answer: IRE combat has issues in that its mechanics don't really support or are supported by roleplay, and are, in fact, completely separate from character development in many ways. But that's not the problem with Lusternia.

The problem is that Lusternia is a constant team free-for-all in which you can really die. That makes it very easy to get frustrated and burned out from combat, and it makes team combat (Which is very, very boring) extremely prevalent. IRE combat just isn't balanced or meant to work well in teams; having a class that focuses on group buffs and another that works through area effects won't fix this. The only possible fixes are to scrap our PK system and replace it with something sane, or to restructure our combat entirely and replace it with something that makes sense in a group setting.