My personal two cents..

The issue I have always seen with organizational conflict was the fact that was and (what is there still) is 'forced'. You do not really have a choice whether you want to involve yourself or not. The old organizational quests (ship of the dead, marilynth, killed demon lords / supernals, whatever there was with ethereal and faethorn..) had a huge impact on one organization or another and if you -lost- them your entire guild might be screwed (guardians with no cosmic beings) or even your entire organization (not being able to do the power quests).

As such it gave people the feeling they had to participate to not get screwed over or see others of their organization suffer or die repeatedly. That never meant it made them happy to constantly defend against raids or work hours on end on counter quests to see them being botched in five minutes though. That's generally when we reached the 'burnout' time when half of Lusternia was complaining about that.

In summary I would love more organizational quests that you can either do alone (!!) or in groups (!) but it shouldn't be forced in such a way that you'll be at a serious disadvantage if the other organization does them... or in any way that would make players feel obligated to help (being raided and having to defend usually does exactly that).

Lusternia has other things besides combat to offer too and I think those not wanting to involve themselves directly in it should be allowed to do that too without being basically griefed about for not coming to defend and the like.

I think conflict should be less meaningful. At least in the sense of not being so focused on harming a nation's core. I don't mind the original suggestions, except for the organizational ones. We need more ways to DO things that don't involve endless tit-for-tat vendettas from a whole city or commune. Let individuals choose sides outside of city/commune defaults. I thought the Kephera/Illithoid quests might be nifty in this regard, until they so clearly aligned themselves with certain nations.

I also agree with all of Narsrim's suggestions, they are long overdue.

Edit: Clarified, hopefully.

Seems like the problem is power! Just remove all the power out of the nexii, and increase powercosts so it's a real struggle again!

It's amusing that you chose the movie where the 300 -defenders- fought back 'a thousand nations' worth of attackers. What we have happening in Lusternia is as though -just- Xerxes had attacked and managed to kill all 300 guards.

One person should not be able to wreak that much havoc, ie cycling through village after village killing hundreds of guards. It might make a "cool" movie for that to happen, but it doesn't make for a fun game.

So yes, the defenses need to be altered in some way to fix this. What Estarra seems to be saying is that they are going to implement something that fixes this problem, but at the same time makes raids more feesable. I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

You just used "300" as a citation to support an argument.

Teehee.

Yeah. Sadly, we're not in Sparta and we're not insanely ripped, ass-kicking soldiers.

THIS... IS... LUSTERNIA! And we're all pussies.

EDIT: Except Geb. He's pretty much Leonidas.

Speak for yourself, english pussy. Rawr.

I'd rather be a pussy than have the hair of one.

A bears.

Was that guard-critting thing it, or is there anything else?

Ninja-ed. I hate you Shamarah.

nurrrrh

Sorry! Moving on!

From the perspective of a real newbie:

Dying for good cause doesn't bother me. If I get killed for intentionally pissing off someone in the wrong position without the muscle to back up my mouth, then yeah. Dying because some loser decides he wants to pound people who basically can't defend themselves into the ground like tent stakes? Yes, that takes the fun out of the game for me.

So, the scared little newbie in me sees suggestions that I don't fully understand, but that seem like they're loosening the chains on people who desperately want me to not have fun, and I get a little apprehensive.

That said, stuff like the Nexus power levels (which, to at least my untrained eye, seem like such huge numbers that they are effectively infinite) seem like they really really want to be sources of conflict, but just aren't except in principle.

But, what I don't want to see is something like:

You greet Furrikin farmer with a friendly hello!

Harbinger of Ragnarok, Gorblasto, Ender of Times and Pulverizer of Kittens enters from the up, riding a chariot composed of vivisected but still living orphans, and wreathed in the obligatory green flame.

You cower in fear.

Gorblasto says, "Hey, you have a title from a city that some people who were involved with a raid that some people from my city were also involved with are from! NOW YOU DIE TO MY AWESOME SKILL FOR YOUR TRANSGRESSION YOU KNEW NOTHING ABOUT OR HAD ANY WAY OF DOING ANYTHING ABOUT IN THE SLIGHTEST!"

You try to flee, but are rooted to the spot by Gorblato's Uber-Jedi-Sith Mind Aura!

Gorblasto says, "See how you are far less skilled than I! Behold my power!"

Gorblasto snorts, sending a mass of air so powerful that it strikes you with the force of a thousand dying suns. You are flung backwards so fast that you exceed the speed of light, travel back in time, and appear in front of yourself. You slam into your past/future self at incredible speed, exploding into tiny atoms.

Gorblasto says, "BWAH HAH HAH! I ARE THE GREETIST!"

The Nexus power levels are generally infinite for all intents and purposes at this point. Draining them would move conflict to Elemental planes (essence gathering raids) and cosmic (don't you lose power if your angels/demons die?) beyond just killing Supernals/DLs and Tide/Rock Lords.

Thankfully, there are pretty much no Gorblastos in Lusternia.

You sir are today's forum winner. That :censor: is funny right there, well played sir.

I've noticed something. People don't complain about losing a village. People like wildnodes even if they don't win. People don't get mad that their city got second place in library rank. People -do- get mad about a tide lord dieing. They get realy mad about demon lords dieing. Why is this? Because people take things alot harder when they are fighting to protect something and lose than when they are fighting to win something and they don't get it. Why not add more things like villages to fight over?

An example: Out in aetherspace is an atherbubble with sapient, influencable jellyfishes living on it. Every few weeks, it becomes unstable and can be brought under control of one of the orgs by bringing a bard npc from their city to the center of the bubble and keeping it alive for long enough to play a soothing song to the jellyfish. While the jellyfishes are under the control of an org, the people from that org can influence the jellyfishes to give them jellyfish jelly. This jelly can be traded to the gnomes for some gold.

I'm ready!

No more "conflict-bubbles."

Thanks!

Hell, let's take it one step further and say no more conflict requiring aetherspace.

Thanks!

Compromises-- the lifeblood of Lusternia.

Though if we could choose to get rid of Aetherspace... (Hey, just think about how much future coding it will save you! That whole Aetherspace-report thing!)