I'd like to know what you think of the current climate in Lusternia with regards to conflict.

From my perspective, it seems we are on a fairly even keel; however, I've heard anecdotal reports that things have turned vicious in ethereal again with constant raids to the point where some people may be leaving out of frustration.

So what is your perspective? Please lets keep this discussion civil and mature. Any "OMG admins r gonna nerf conflict!" replies will not be welcome. I'm just curious as to what your opinions are.

There's little left to do beyond raiding, I've just started it myself. I find it entertaining, even if I die because if I die it's not going to hurt me much due to Conglut. However, as someone who lasted a long time without it, I understand it hurts those who do not have a way to be revived yet.

It can also be a lot sometimes, I know that. By both sides, so I'm not just playing favourites. Serenwilde raids often, Glomdoring raids often. The two Communes get almost no where with it, but unlike the Cities we have no conflict quests to do. The Cities still have their Supernal/Demon Lord thing, though it's good and doesn't happen that often from the looks of it. They're difficult to take down, so it's a challenge.

I don't quite understand what the difference is between the cosmic planes and ethereal. I know that ethereal has faethorn in the middle (I don't know if that's where people are fighting), but there is still a pretty decent amount of raiding on Nil/Celestia (almost every time I've logged in over the past week which hasn't been often).

Personally I think the conflict level is fine, and I'm wondering if people are just frustrated because they aren't used to that sort of conflict.

The city conflict is soul-crushingly boring. It's just raid Celestia, raid Nil, raid Celestia, raid Nil, ad nauseum. And of course raiding those places doesn't actually do anything except boost epeen.

That's pretty much why I left Celest.

I get to log in about once per day at this point. Twice if I'm lucky. I pester my guild mates to message me whenever important things happen, and I from that I get quite a few complaints about things. I haven't had anyone complain to me about conflict, other than to say that a person they were trying to kill ran away too quickly, or someone else got their kill. So from my perspective, things are going great.

Why aren't people using the Nexus Worlds since they were setup to (a) make Aethership conflict more feasible and ( to allow a replacement for conflict quests?

I have to agree on this, it's annoying for me mainly because the phrase "Raid on Nil" usually means that a huge group of Celestians is on Nil and we don't have many citizens, so we'll go up and inevitably die and lose experience. It's almost pointless, half of the time by the time defenders are grouped all of the plane is melded, all of the demons are killed, and they'll eventually leave from boredom themselves. I'm sure the same thing happens in Celest a good amount of the time when Magnagora raids as well. I wouldn't say get rid of it at all, it's just a bit monotonous.

From what I understand, they use aetherspace to more easily raid the general places, Nexus worlds don't have anything to raid at this point though.

... because there's nothing on them, maybe?

I don't think they're actually finished yet, are they?

I know this isn't going to happen, and I'd probably regret it if it did, but: Bring back conflict quests!

Yeah, not much to do but raid and be raided on cosmic or ethereal. It doesn't matter to me if different things are added or not for conflict, but it does kind of feel like a treadmill, doing the same thing every day and I can understand why a lot of people would get bored. I'd like to see nexus worlds be worth raiding to shake things up a bit.

My Serenwilde character is no fighter, but she has been killed in fights in Faethorn. I don't really mind. I treat it as part of the role play.

Edit: I would like to see what happens when the Nexus Worlds develop.

We need battleground type area's where you can fight with no concequences and actually get something for your org. Currently all you get is power, but with the chance to lose herbs, experiance, and equiptment, give us an area where you dont lose anything whatsoever and there's actually a point to fighting in it.

Give us an area off cont or on cont, where teams of 5-15 or so, can go in, and fight for certain things, like ctf type things, grab and hold, annihilate, and get comms, power, and such for their organization, have them held like once or twice, maybe even three times a day, evenly spaced.

Battle for Mount Avechna, Hallifax Basin, Gaudiguch Valley, Skarch Crater

Celest-Mag conflict is boring, for all the relevant reasons discussed above. As a non-combatant, I find it annoying when I -do- go with a raid (because, being a Bard and not very adept at this fighting business, I'm often useless or left behind or killed, or a combination thereof) and when I don't go, my reputation in the city decreases steadily (to the point that, being a non-combatant, I constantly feel I lack the respect of the combatants in the city, and I don't really know (or at this point care) how to get it back).

When something Celestian is under attack, it's basically the same scenario.

The conflict quests (when they had an effect) were boring and tedious.

One thing I dislike about Lusternian conflict is that you're often "forced" into doing something, and if you don't, you'll either have to declare near-permanent pacifism or suffer disgrace in the face of your community...but from the way the world is set up, I don't see how you can avoid this...

Too much WoW?

Also NO to collecting squid/devil fish/lantern fish for hours on an end ever again. That was brutal. Also, are there working quests that enable cities to hurt communes now? Been away for a while and I'm not really up-to-date with everything.

On another note, looking forward to the possibility of some of the conflict moving into aetherspace and such, if only for the novelty of it.

The Communes submitted something like this to the Plots board a while back.

Really, I think the issue is that the conflict is stale and boring... it never changes, it's pretty much always the same thing (Raid Celestia, Raid Nil for cities. Raid EthGlom/EthSeren for Communes.) The only "refreshing" thing is Faethorn where you can choose whether or not to participate, but being ordered not to do anything at all there kind of kills that.

I've always seen the major negative to raiding or defending is the fact that, you see, 12 people raid, and you have 6, it's like, well we can go up, die, lose herbs, experiance, salves and overall confidence, or we can go bash, and let them finish up, because if we defend or not, they're going to win and do it all anyway.

he addition of battleground type area's would mean, it wouldn't be pointless to actually go in there, anything you would do would actually help your org, hell even if it's only like 1 power for each person who participates, it still means, you could get a group of 15 total newbies against a group of the 15 best fighters, and they'd still of contributed to actually fighting. Since nothing would actually be lost or consumed in them, it would actually be an good thing to go in there, gives orgs team combat practice, as well as being able to release your frustration in smacking around smaller people.

Exactly. That's been something I've been suggesting / pushing for. We need less things where people feel OBLIGATED to be involved (Ie, Nil/Ethereal/Conflict quests-- this is the direction the admin have been moving in, which is good), and more "low-scale" conflict where people can CHOOSE to be involved (hasn't really been put in place yet, but I'm hopeful it will be). Minor personal rewards (perhaps allowing to draw some power for yourself), or other little things... no major organization rewards, or people will feel expected to attend / be involved. Low-key conflict is necessary, while high-key conflict is draining (depressing) to many people.

I liked that suggestion too. "Optional" combat would be nice. The fact is that if your character is at all involved, you're pressured (quite fairly) into defending Celestia or whatever so when it gets attacked every day for several hours for a whole week it burns you out.

I guess it'd be too much to ask as to why that idea was rejected though...I guess that's the plan with the Plots board in general, but I'd still be interested so the people who made it can go to the new commune leaders and revise it.