Note: I've played another IRE game extensively and was around during Open Beta for the fun of it.

For the cost of getting a character up and running (Guild Skills, the "required" skills, and some of the "not needed, but you're way better off having them") I could make a character on another IRE -and- buy a couple artifacts. I've seen on the other game forums where people ask on advice of a viable class if they only Trans one skill or so, and they actually have choices open to them in hunting and PvP (not all classes, but some). I can't say that there aren't classes here, as I don't know enough about them, but it seems that entire sections of the game are practically off-limits if you don't have the required skills.

The startup cost of a useful character here is immense.


I haven't played in awhile... lemme go look at a worldmap on the website before making this last statement.

...

*Jeopardy music*

...

Ok yeah. Same as I remember. The gameworld is very.... spreadout. There are places where you can go 10 or more rooms with only having one exit besides the one you just came in through. Many of the areas are only connected to those highways, or maybe one other area. Put simply, the world feels very empty and barren. The few times I've played, I've purposefully kept my character in the newbie areas because I haven't heard of a decent alternative to hunt or make gold beyond that. There's the denizen villages for quests to make gold, but it feels like half the stuff available you can't kill as you have to be friends when the influencing time rolled around (and of course that city will come pummel the hell out of you if you attack stuff there). Maybe the longer roads are on purpose to feel more like a highway or to make more geographical sense to have large villages/settlements/areas off to the side.


I want to like Lusternia, as it does stand out from the other IRE games, but the cost of entry is enough to give me pause. Let's be honest - buying credits for multiple skills is expensive. I was able to get by in other game I played via credit market and org credit sales for a LONG time before I bought credits off the website (which was for a toy artifact, basically). That just isn't nearly as possible anymore (though that's in all IRE games, I think).

You can get a lot done with low skills and outside the newbie areas, just takes a little research.

I think that's a problem - always hard for new players to find all the options.

The barren land feel I actually like, seems a bit more real, and with all the telportation abilities so common, I think the world actually feels small.

But as for Credits, I think you are 100% correct. I've wanted my sister to play this game for a while, but she won't because of how much stuff you need.

On the other hand, Lusternia is also the game that gives you the most amount of skills and abilities for the least amount of lessons. You can spend 15 lessons in a skillset and get like 6 starting skills.

High skills are necessary only if you want to be a good PvPer. You can easily study only one skill (excluding things like Capable in Discernment or Influence) and have good results:
Knighthood+specs for warriors
Druidry for druids
Elementalism specs for mages
Cosmic specs for guardians
Moon/Night (NOT Wicca!) for wiccans
Music for bards
Kata for monks - not sure about this one, but Harmony/Psychometabolism don't look so "must have"

Trans Planar helps, but is not required. Everything rest is for PvP only. People who say that you need tri-trans to even start being decent use a totally different scale - they are probably all-trans and simply judge when compared to their own skills.

Lusternia has, in my opinion, three anti-novice problems.
First - Newton is boring (Lolliprin is okay though), and after reaching 21st level novices do not have a "default" area to go to - Toronada Tidal Flats is NOT a good area for newbies. Afflicting monsters - they are supposed to be an introduction into the affliction system, but more often than not they just kill the newbie instead. Also, quests there are few, experience is bad and you earn only pitiful sums of money. We need a BETTER post-newton area.
Second - There is a lot of features in Lusternia: from the way most quests are made (push, pull, turn-a-rama) to annual events like manifestation sand collection or weakenings. But there are very few HELP files on them, and what we have is not precise enough. As a result, novices are NOT aware of most of these features and get bored/low on xp and gold because they cannot participate in them unless someone else tells them.
However, I hope that the org-specific newbie areas thing that Estarra said they're working on will solve both of these issues.
Third one left, and admins can't help here I am afraid. Players will have to.
Third - guild novice information. It often appeared that a novice asked a question and no one answered them, even though they were people around. I saw it happen, some of my alts even experienced this. Especially in New Celest guilds (I'm afraid I'll have to point fingers). This is INEXCUSABLE. ALSO, GHELP files should be written in a way that will allow a new novice to train themselves even when there is no one around to help them. Direction to the guild trainer, explanation on how to learn (and not just learn xx stuffA, learn yy stuffB ) and how to USE these skills. Most guilds do not have that. And you must make sure that the novices know HOW to access the GHELP file. Best way - use the HELP GUILDNOVICES GUILD file, as I believe it is pointed at during the tour. But bogus - so many guilds use that only to write propaganda crap. Spiritsingers for example (it won't help if I won't point fingers) - not a single mention on what GHELP file to read. You expect novices to know the GHELP INDEX command and how to browse it?

alright I feel the need to fix a couple things. You can easily study one skill and be useful in pvp, but you really are just standing there. This applies to druidry for druids and elementalism for mages. If you want a chance as a wiccan or guardian you need three trans guildskills in my opinion. The only exception being Night where half the time you're okay with trans wiccan and up to choke in Night. if you want to be potentially ridiculous and something new, go healing in the shadowdancers since they just got new buffs. For low credit incomes, warriors are definately one of the best lower tier fighters. So if you were to fight people at your might, assuming same basic skill levels (both have systems and stuff) then the warrior is most likely going to win cause deepwounds is just a cool system here. Now that monks are out, I think they're also a good choice for low credits. I agree with Cuber that you'll only need the kata part transed. If you go bard, you don't need music transed, just mastered. You actually need more glamours.

Lusty actually has a lot of really good gold options. I hear imperian is ridiculous with them, but their credit prices are also higher. You could be a super freak like me and played way too much to get all the things I've gotten without buying any credits, but you'll also have to really enjoy here (and have a lot of time) to do so.

oh and actually newbies and just out of newbieness can do really well on aetherhunts, which I wish got more attention. It's actually really good experience, and relatively risk free as long as you have a full crew. And I keep trying to push for serenwilde to sell 5 credits at cheap for people with inept aethercraft so they can get all the basic aethercraft skills and make things like this possible. it's actually more like 3 credits if you want to be useful. the first three skills in it are basically all you need.

You, too, eh?

heh but you have paliside! That's not even fair. everyone uses it too. You don't get to talk! I've heard about your crazy shananigans and your 1000+ credit loans!

Speaking of...mind loaning me 1000+ credits? Either of you? Anyone?

If I were a novice (or a 70 year-old monk) and someone gave me 1000+ credits, I would definitely hang around.

I've gotten about half my credits from Palisade, yeah. The rest came from herbs and other stuff.

I only loaned 1,000 credits to a very good friend in Achaea (twice, actually). My loans here have been comparatively small. I've made loans and gifts to people I trusted and liked, only to see them disappear anyway.

As much as I'd like to help with the novice retention rate (to keep to the topic at least a teensy bit), novices aren't generally the ones that get huge (or even small) credit loans based on trust and respect.

heh. I've made some small loans and big ones. not as big as you, but a few hundred credit loans, Thankfully I've only seen one loan disappear so far, that was 160 credits but it could've been worse. I used to be a big gambler. and now I just gamble for fun and tend to lose or win a couple hundred thousand gold. Every now and again though I think to myself, if I weren't so cheap, I could've just bought 40 credits with that gold I just lost, but then again I am cheap! So i've got this whole problem with buying credits over 4k and I tend to just save up all the gold to the point where I don't really ahve a use for it other than gambling it and having some fun with that.

That would really depend on the skillset and game, as there are quite a few other skillsets that give more for 15 lessons.

I will go ahead and say that the two biggest "start/retain" problems I have seen/experienced are credits needed to compete and world events that screw with new players. This will get soap-boxy so I'll start with the more "interesting" first, I suppose.

The events I'm talking about specifically that have taken place during my time here so far: Snakes roaming the world, falling through your nexus onto astral, and the plague. Various other ones that had minor impacts also took place. The falling through the Nexus crap happened during my second week here and I can tell you in full honesty it almost made me quit. Newbies learn to navigate from their Nexus points, that's just how it is. It's a focal point for gathering and early learning. The general tutor is there. Newbies WILL pass the Nexus. Falling through the Nexus as a penalty for being there for more than two seconds was garbage. Falling straight to astral at 2 am CST and having to pray? Give me a break. There was nothing more frustrating than my guaranteed death and eventual prayer. The times I didn't die, I had to wait for almost 45 minutes to get a pickup. Thankfully Hyrtakos had that kind of patience. Instagibbed by snakes was also great fun. The burning pywhatevers that killed me at every convenient midlevel hunting spot, another good one. More recently, the plague infecting everyone out of novicehood (and believe me, even brand new people get out of novicehood fast with tasks) who even passed someone with it, also very bad. Randomly being unable to sip, my alt couldn't even influence, let alone bash. Frustrating.

The credit thing is a little out of hand, I think. There are a lot of skills contained in the same/guild trees on the other IRE muds that are split into their own trees or stuck into the high end of trees that have nothing useful in them, per se. Tumble is ridiculously high in Environment, seen by most as a useless tree. The three horsemen of the Apocalypse: Resilience, Magic, and Combat. The Apocalypse itself? Discipline. Nuclear Winter? Planar. People who come and say you can "do alright" by tri trans'ing guild must be talking about bashing, and not bashing off-prime, that's for sure. When people talk about being able to perform at 2 trans or 2.5 trans and change in other muds, they mean it. It's possible to play Imperian at a competitive level with "most" of your guild skills and some lessons spent here and there for miniskill (half cost to trans) bonuses and the misc. stuff like tumble, focus, etc. Those are almost all in the same tree or VERY low in said trees. Pretty much the same in Aetolia. Never tried Achaea as I hear it takes TPS forms in triplicate to get away with killing another player.

Specific examples of why each of those skills are necessary and are considered credit sinks:

Having to dump enough into environment to get tumble absolutely sucks.

The three "defensive" skills as I call them are absolutely necessary to compete in PvP and high-end bashing. Resilience soaking damage and giving shrugging? Hell yes. Warriors can poison you so fast that your head spins, you must be able to soak some of that damage and shrug the poisons or you go down like nobody's business. Magic? If you don't want to be instakill bait for a laundry list of non-melee skills this is an absolute must-have. Probably the least so of the three, but once you have it, you understand what you were missing. Combat? Be realistic. You need this to fight weapon classes and an absolute ton of weapon users are out there. In the days of group combat that we live in, you will always have someone trying to cut off your legs and crush your windpipe. This links back to resilience in which people will get ridiculously fast locks on you with no shrugging. You need to drop enough to get to Master here if you plan on ever entering combat, let alone a bit higher for most classes for shield bash as a stall. Advanced stances and effectiveness of those stances later on? Yes please.

Planar. Noone fights on prime except in revolts and some of the biggest/baddest players. Almost all prime-based bashing spots are bashed out CONSTANTLY. So whether you want to PvP or PvE, planar is the place to be. Conglutinate, nexus, etc. All incredibly useful and a serious must have 300 credits right here.

What's that leave? The big mamma jamma: Discipline. This has got to be toned down. People are forced to pay 300 credits for what is an herb cure anywhere else. I don't care what else this tree gives (that should probably be combined with another tree as far as skills go) the focus body effect of discipline has got to be checked. If you plan on fighting, you better plan on dumping into this bad boy. It is by far the biggest deterrent to ANY newbie combatant I have ever talked to, and I've talked to a lot of them. Simple fact is, if you know someone isn't trans (or close to it) in discipline, you can completely hose them by spamming para. Period. The focus rate with nothing in Discipline? You might as well log out and come back tomorrow.

So yeah, that's my rant. I love this place, but those are my main beefs. I have gotten friends to try this both non-IRE vets and IRE vets, and only two have stuck around. Zero of about ten combatants stuck around. Why? They can't afford/aren't willing to spend the large amount of money to get to a competitive level.

Well, my turn... As a novice for Lustenia too, I can say:
1) 24-Hour's barrier is annoying... Very annoying. It's will be really better wizout it.
2) NEWBIE channel level cap isn't good too... Sometimes we need to ask ALL people after 21'th level.... May be just rename it to ASK/ANSWER like in SoG\\DF2 ?
3) Newton is good, but we really need more places for novices (min. 3, IMHO).
4) After SoG\\DF2 I really miss AutoComplete fetature, when you can type "ca hu sw" instead of "cast 'hungry weapon' sword"... Lot's of work on setuping clients.

It's only most basic points, I will add more later.

1) Personally I've only really found the 24 hours novicehood annoying if I hit 100% adept somewhere and weren't able to proceed further. Usually there are other things I can spend lessons on so it's not that big of a problem. Also, most guilds offer fairly easy advancement tasks so if you're really impatient it shouldn't be hard to get out of novicehood a lot faster. Plus, what I really like about Lusternia is that you can class as soon as you are gr1. In the other IRE games I never considered being a -really- out of novicehood until I had class.. and that generally took a lot longer.

2) I've noticed that before too, all you can do in that case is either ask your mentor (if you have one) or ask on GNT. If you play a rogue you're a bit screwed there. But then rogues are screwed in lusternia in general.
EDIT: However it also teaches you to not depend on the newbie channel forever. You can also -always- regardless of level ask a guide with a tell.

3) I think what most only realize too late is that Newton basically consists of three areas: Caverns, Lolliprin and the top of the mountain. I agree though that more newbie areas would make it more interesting. I've also found Newton somewhat flat as it has ZERO to do with the Basin outside it. Newbie areas that are somewhat linked to one or the other org or can tell you a bit about the history of lusternia would be nice. Likewise, right now there really aren't any post-newton areas. The best you can do for gold/exp after newton is gathering pilgrims/bards/scholars. Hunting anything else will cost you a lot more (ie sips, herb cures etc) than it's really worth.

4) While Lusternia doesn't really have an auto complete feature in the way you mean you can set up aliase in game that work client independently. HELP ALIAS should be able to tell you more. You could for example make one called 'chws' that executes as 'cast hungry weapon sword'. Alternatively you can set up such an alias on the client side. The choice is yours there.

Mushclient has tab autocompletion for things.

That function only exists for PvP, where it matters the most. Like if you were attacked by Tchaichlao and were in a rush to counterattack but kept messing up the spelling (I had to look her name up...), you can just target Tchai, Tcha, Tch, or any other variation rather than the whole lengthy name.

I am just eagerly awaiting for the novice collegiums to be finished. However I agree that the number of things to do in Lusternia requires lots of lessons/credits. I'm not sure if that's something Lusternia alone can change though or if it has to be an IRE-approved thing, since it has to do with their finances and stuff :shrug:

I agree. Alot of the skills are top heavy.



You can bash anywhere but astral with about gifted in the skill that has your bashing attack. It isn't very fast, but it's perfectly doable.

I think that it would be cool if the collegiums had a newbie bashing area that related to the city/commune. Mag could have a cemetary for the city's poor that are raised up as skeletons for novices to practice fighting. Glomdoring could have a big spider nest under the spider's larder. Celest could have an underwater cave with angry fish. Serenwilde could have something of some sort.

I just started a while ago and after a while I made the decision to leave and never go back.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I love depth more than I love pretty graphics. I like the prospect of getting lost in rampant discovery in several exciting new features rather than just applying one concept such as grinding for hours and hours straight.
And that's why I don't like Lusternia. It's simply not as enthralling as some graphical games with less effort put into 'depth'. Morrowind, for example, kept me interested in all the little secrets that were lying around the place, and magecraft there was just brilliant. Lusternia... well, you say you have your deep political system and culture. As a newbie I just can't help but think, yeah, so what? Now I can hear about people leading other players into battle while I'm getting beat up by finks. You have just given me World of Warcraft without graphics, one solitary area, and rats. Lots of rats.
If you claim to have depth, you have to deliver. No, giving someone an endless amounts of choices from the beginning without telling them what to do at all isn't deep, it's just confusing. And it certainly isn't fun.
So what am I suggesting? I know this is blasphemy, but for the love of God, streamline. Just for the newbies- really point them in the direction they need to go. Furthermore, introduce the concepts of all the guilds and races BEFORE character creation, as in, if I decide to play a Faeling, point out which guild I should join to augment my natural ability. RetroMUD made it clear, as a feline character, my best bet would be playing a monk. I know Lusternia points out which races are frail or strong or smart or what have you, but stat-wise, I have no idea what my Faeling should be doing. Even worse, I wanted to play an Aquamancer, but had no idea what race to use. Is strength more important to a warrior or dexterity? What's the benefit of 18 dexterity in the first place? Are these stats set in stone? That's to figure out after you've made your character- and then it's too late, isn't it?
I'm not saying the game is bad. It's genius- I'm sure that once you get into it, with the community, and know what you're doing, it's a phenomenal experience. You just have to make it appealing from the get-go. And I know the devs put lots of effort into Newton, but it just doesn't hold my attention. Killing finks isn't my idea of depth.
What the game needs is an optional quest for each guild that not only benefits that faction, but introduces the player to the world. Something like Morrowind, that gives you a package to deliver, in the process showing you two cities, and then opening up into some real quests. Of course they'd have to be generic and wouldn't lead up to anything really epic. Just make us feel wanted. I feel too much like a burden. If I was able to take some newbie quests that would seriously help the guild, not only would that alleviate that feeling, but it would make the veterans more willing to teach. Not that they don't do that well already, it's just that I feel like dead weight, which makes it feel all the more frustrating.
I'm not saying that the game should become quest-based like some MMO's, with mindless NPCs running the experience. Just don't leave me with this massive world to explore with no leads, with the alternative being killing finks in the tunnels. Help in character creation would also be nice, so that I'm not figuring out how bad my character is after being killed in the friggin' newbie area. Having all the characters I met in the beginning freak out because I died 'too soon' didn't make me feel any better- though it's a nice touch for veterans.

tl;dr: Less grinding, more streamlined quests for beginners, ways to help the chosen guild from the get-go as opposed to being dead weight that people teach in the hopes that you will become useful, and more help during character creation so we build the character we would want the -first- time. No more of that 'oh, we're incredibly deeper when compared to WoW with all its' grinding', followed by 'oh, all the deep and interesting stuff is for higher level characters. You have to go kill around 800 finks or so to get enough experience to achieve that high a level.' Seriously, that's just rude.

Wow, that's quite some rant.

The newbie system has been streamlined recently and it's getting more enhancements one day to help teach people more about the game as a whole. While I see your point about not knowing which stats are good for which guilds, it's really not hard to guess. Monks use dexterity, warriors are big and strong, mages favor the intelligence... just like most other games of this type.

If you want to know more about the politics of the game (or anything else for that matter), all you have to do is have a look at HELP POLITICS, HELP ELECTIONS, etc, etc. The game's help system is really quite good. I've seen some games that make absolutely NO sense AND their help system either sucked or just plain didn't exist.

Morrowind? I tried to get into Morrowind a few times and I completely failed to see the big attraction. I was spending minutes upon hours just picking herbs (with an Xbox controller, it's easier said than done because the stalks are about two pixels wide), not even knowing what to do with them. The game was long, boring, uninteresting, and altogether unfun.

Getting out of Newton Caverns and into the 'real world' part of the game is also amazingly simple. If you have questions, you ask for assistance. If you want to explore, you ask for directions (HELP MAPS is also good). However, if you want someone to hold your hand the whole time you're playing, you just may be out of luck.

I don't want someone holding my hand the whole time, I just want less of a 'here's how you talk, here's how you fight, here's how you move, have fun' sort of thing. A bit more of a real quest that takes you from the Portal of Fate to a certain level where you're more capable of dealing with the world, while showing you what you'll be facing in Lusternia, would be helpful and would also attract fans of other games. I'm not saying it should be dumbed down to an action-adventure level; just take new players by the hand and show them the world. I really don't feel like a part of the guild until later and while I'm sure there are ways to get into it early on, it's not really made obvious until later on when you're powerful enough to do some honest exploration. The community does a good job of showing new players the ropes, but sometimes everyone is busy or can't help for whatever reason. It also feels like I'm a burden whenever I do manage to get help.
Again, I'm not saying the game is bad. It's fantastic, I'm sure. I just can't get into it when I'm put in the middle of nowhere and told to 'have fun'. My first experience was wandering around thinking 'well, what could I be doing right about now?'
If nothing else, at least make it clearer what we could be doing. Aside from walking and bashing at Newton, that is. Surely there's some cooler stuff to be had, even as a newbie. Some people don't want to spend time looking for the fun they could be having- some people just want to have fun and it's partially the games' responsibility to give them that. I'm sure the open-ended experience wouldn't be dumbed down or hampered too much if you just had the odd NPC 'seek you out' (find you wherever you might be) and point you to in a certain direction. You could always ignore it if you wanted. Just putting it out there.

Did I make another huge post again? I did. Oh dear.