I'm not going to even try to quote specific things you point out as it was a very long post!

I agree with you on quite a few things. I wrote my 10 year anniversary essay on my experiences and how I felt about the game when I first started playing. I cannot with any honesty say I still feel the same way about the game. Part of that is due to things not being new and fresh anymore but a good deal of it is there is no longer the intensity there once was.

That is neither here nor there though. There are ways to drain power from a city's nexus at least. They just are either not good or not feasible anymore. You used to be able to knock out the Star of Celest or the Necromante and attack the nexi themselves. You still can in theory, but in practice it won't happen and if it does you will be called a griefer because players really hate that kind of blow to their organization. You can also kill the angels/demons and steal some very small amount from the cities nexi. Not enough to notice.

Also, people do still participate in construct battles. To some extent. Celest recently started up again and I know the Communes have been. The problem is that while it is conflict it just isn't interesting conflict. But it is a step in the right direction in the sense that someone bored in offpeak hours can't just go in and strike a huge blow to your organization. But the rest of the concept just does not seem to be working as intended.

I agree that the envoy system is flawed but I am uncertain making it public will actually improve it. Though I cannot say it would hurt anything. I agree wholeheartedly with Geb's assessment that it really is an arms race as opposed to actually balancing anything but the most obvious imbalances. Whether it can be something better is something I do not know but I think we should definitely try. Every class in the game does NOT need upgrades every month.

I am perfectly fine with wanting to reduce the level of conflict that is easily abused and turn people off of the game. No one wants to wake up to all their guards dead or their important NPCs all slain while they were sleeping. The problem is that we just do not have enough *meaningful* conflict outside of these areas. It does not have to be a zero-sum game. But it is something that really needs to be looked at before anything else I feel. Not just a tweak here and there but a serious reassessment of conflict in the game. Conflict is why most of us are here. Not brutal, grinding, misery inducing conflict, but definitely conflict. And conflict is not just PKing though that is the most obvious example.

About envoys - the notion that they should be accountable to their guild is idiotic. They shouldn't. As envoys, their job is to ensure that combat is balanced and therefore fun for everybody, not to defend their guild's interests in some sort of fight to see who gets the good skills. I thought that was obvious.

Sometimes, I kinda miss the Inner Sea quest. Not the part where you have to gather a whole boatload of squid and such, but the rest of it

Regarding Rodngar's post, I personally would rather not the wiki be made public, but neither will I pitch a fit if it's made so. It'd be fine with me.

My only concern, as always would be that when/if the process is made public, we'll suddenly get forum topics/clan discussion/PM's/messages/tells about anything and everything. Quite frankly, it's not tough finding out who's suggesting what already, no one just likes getting needled every process about their decisions.

Short version: Not sure it'll actually do anything but make the forums livelier and the envoys more thick-skinned, but I don't mind.

No, you didn't. It was an inadvertent and pretty much unavoidable result. Your posts have intelligent points behind them. Trolling implies the opposite.

I didn't misinterpret it either. While it wasn't the point of your posts, they brash way you've made your points did give the Administration (some needed) whiplash. Those that are considering your posts as trolling -are- misinterpreting them.

And yes, I do.

I chuckled when I read it, because I figured it was fairly obvious to most people that it was in the extreme side of flaming and mocking the posting style of "hard-knocks facts relayed with gusto." People wanted to be offended, so they were. Satire is lost on people when their hackles are up, usually. People hear envoys bitch about the system sometimes because that's how things go down. .0000000000001% of customer service calls originate with the intent to praise the establishment. What you don't hear is that on a monthly basis we are continually tuning up :censored: that would take a full year on other (Imperian) IRE muds.

Now, recently, people are crying about the envoy system being invisible because they think the envoys hatched some heinous plot to bring about DMP to destroy their beloved MUD, which is ridiculous. DMP is a "good thing" because it provides a baseline to balance against. People don't seem to get that. That's a problem with making the envoy system public, people will fight to keep what they have regardless of the balance issues surrounding it. Also, I don't know a single envoy that will refuse to tell you what is being envoyed currently and take suggestions on what to envoy in the coming months. Insofar as the guild I envoy for goes, we are still unable to create projects tagged to Tahtetso (feel free to help us with that, any imm reading this! ), so I can't establish an information stream just yet.

Conflict... Where to begin? I've been mudding since before Achaea came out, exclusively PvP oriented. I've been on design staffs, coding staffs, and balancing staffs for a lot of MUDs over the years. I've played PvP servers in every single major (and some unknown korean) MMO's to date. Won several competitive FPS tournaments, console tournaments, and general gameplay tournaments. I've griefed the innocent, griefed the griefers, and been griefed. Forced people to lose years of work by dragging their corpses under dragons until they rotted on a week long timer, looted castles with months of items stored in them by stacking tables, locked down the whole Light side in Caemlyn with one Circle-based thief class, and stayed up until three in the morning to crush a city that took two months to build by hoisting centaurs over the walls. There's a definite rush in making people bitch about you, and I'm afraid that that is what a lot of people are after. It's the notoriety, not the victory, some people relish. Raiding is not a competition. Neither is defending.

I think some people are also confusing griefing with bee-hive kicking. On Prime, that's killing guards until someone comes and stops you. Granted, yank-killing every single guard in an org is the opposite end, but a lot of times people will kick/kill denizens in order to create conflict if none is happening. This is where the self-control geb mentioned comes in.

I like to think I've grown up a bit, and just prefer to fight because the fighting itself is fun. To that end, I have the following suggestions:







Limit griefing, maximize combat exposure, and create tangible rewards. Lusternia is by far the best combat IRE mud in my opinion, it just needs a little more rumble room.

I've already said I don't intend to make the wiki public. However, again, if you want to set up an alternative forum (or anyone else for that matter), I'm happy to close the existing one. It's really no skin off my nose.

I think final reports with admin feedback should be passed on to the guild (and many already are), and the veto/slot system revoked. They're the key problems. Encouraging public commentary on every minor idea or discussion, however, would be anathema to improvement in the system. It would only exacerbate what's wrong with it now.

As for the continuous 'be a man' comments, just so you know, I'm gay. I don't have to subvert my intelligence and sense for the sake of macho posturing and jostling in order to get ahead in the tribe. Many other respected players here are women and more forward-thinking guys who again don't subscribe to such patriarchial and misogynistic rubbish. I find it hard to believe you were an envoy, although maybe Imperian has different expectations. Nonetheless, I can assure you that most the people who do that work here are willing to take responsibility for what they suggest. That they don't want to have every spelling or numerical error, not to mention reconsidered tentative ideas, seized upon and ridiculed across the flameforum doesn't mean they don't have courage, it means they're not stupid.

I have yet to hear some original and thought-provoking arguments from you, although what you're saying so far is quite lengthy and well-written. I can certainly see you're very interested in playing IRE games though, which is definitely a good thing.

I agree with Desitrus.

I fully intend to chew him out for that later -cough-. Which, really, is what he deserves since his SO majors in gender/women's studies and he should know better by now.

He was, however, an envoy-equivalent (classlead) in Imperian, on multiple occasions. Classleads DO work differently in Imperian and Rodngar seems to forget that up until this latest (inordinately long) classlead, classlead info there wasn't available to the public either, and could only be appointed by a patron etc.

He also forgets that it wasn't really all that better afterward, and there was definitely wailing and gnashing of teeth over various lead reports by other 'leads, combatants, etc.

The minutiae doesn't really need to be discussed with the attention to detail of biologist examining a cell under a microscope, at least in my opinion. It would be nice if, as a fact of coding or policy, the guild was alerted to its envoy's finished suggestions and even nicer if the envoy him or herself takes suggestions from the guild at large. Certainly I've known of a few cases (in other IRE MUDs) where the envoy-equivalent has stated to the guild, "I'm not taking suggestions, and the report is OOC so it's none of your business."

I greatly enjoy happy mediums.

Regarding envoys, I've been very pleased with our system. I feel it is a unique system and has been working well for Lusternia. For those who feel it is fatally flawed, we'll have to agree to disagree. BTW, I don't delude myself into thinking it is perfect--we have had to remove envoys before (talk to your guild patron if there are issues with your envoy). However, overall I have been quite impressed with the envoys and the process. Also, if you want to know what's going on in the envoy process, your envoy should tell you.

Regarding conflict, I want to emphasize that everything implemented to reduce the stress of conflict was done for a reason. When I was a starry eyed producer, I too felt that conflict was an important aspect and put in a lot of points of conflict. However, I ended up being burned over and over as conflict drove Lusternia into the ground. No, this is no exaggeration. We hemorrhaged players like you wouldn't believe. Thus, we began the process of implementing systems and safeguards to reduce the conflict.

Have we gone too far? I absolutely do not believe so. Again, if you think otherwise, we will have to agree to disagree. Karma, discretionary powers, upgrades to guards, diffusion of some of the world quests, upgrades to avatar-level denizens, insanity for camping on enemy planes, all of this was necessary. And even so, raiding is not “impossible” -- I see people raiding all the time.

So what are my current thoughts on conflict?

I have to agree with those who pointed out that conflict whose aim is to demoralize another organization is a bad thing. Conflict where players feel forced to participate (or else compromise their rp) is a bad thing. Conflict that makes players constantly grind is a bad thing. Conflict where people can constantly gain an upper hand during off hours is a bad thing. Conflict that is not regulated in time is a bad thing (as it leads to player exhaustion having to always be “on”).

The one system that I think shows the most promise for conflict are the nexus world battles. We will be spending time studying it and tweaking it. Constructs and colossi are not going away so I hope you will choose to embrace them and work with us in making this a vibrant system. I have already approached a very knowledgeable player with a lot of experience with constructs to help us out in tweaking the design but I encourage everyone to offer insights.

My 'be a man' comments are mostly born not of 'machoism be the big burly dude in charge'.. but generally of more of a broad term of 'get a thicker skin'. In my opinion, if you take a job like the one an envoy does, you have to be prepared to deal with the consequences you may incite.


Honestly, who needs original and thought-provoking arguments, though.. when you have the plain truth?

Because you don't seem to have the plain truth. You seem to be mixing a lot of fact and fiction together into a broad, flawed tapestry. Some of what you say is, indeed, true-- and some of it, especially your envoy comments, don't really seem to be (Narsrim's comments notwithstanding. Though I thought that asking someone to post for you when you're banned is prohibited...)

Again, Narsrim was an envoy a while back, and the process has been tweaked considerably since then, as well as having envoys replaced who needed to be replaced. The admin do try to keep on top of the envoy system.

I agree with you on most of those, but I very strongly disagree with the last point. Scheduled conflicts and semi-random timed conflicts are not a great solution. One, it cuts down on the ability to play impulsively. Freedom to just go do interesting stuff is great. Two, it doesn't actually do much for the health or sanity of the committed playerbase. Semi-random events, like village revolts, still benefit largely from people spending a long time online. Scheduled events require rearranging the real world to make it work.



You don't. Therefore, you need original and thought-provoking arguments.

I suppose I should be terrified...

1. I read one of Catarin's posts and actually related to it. I think the post starting page 10 is one of the most reasonable I've read, even though I don't agree with it all.
2. I agreed with Veritrhax.
3. I like some of Desitrus' ideas
4. I agreed with Avaer
5. Xavius and Estarra agree on some issues, and I find myself agreeing with both of them.

It's time for this thread to die. It is destroying who we are and perverting the wonderful enmity we have all come to enjoy, even while creating new arguments that never previously existed. It is just twisting everything good in the world into a new, bizarre universe that I do not know or understand!

I believe that some of the systems you have put in are great for controlling rampant, uninteresting, grief-centered conflict. However, I'm of the opinion that you put way too much padding on the corners of the table so to speak - now it's difficult to move anywhere in the baby-proofed house. Could it perhaps be considered that one or some of these safeguards be nixed, lessened, or compromised down a little? I'm talking mostly about the ones that prevent conflict on Prime - Planar conflict can be arranged and achieved, I believe, through player organization.

My biggest problem with the current safety triggers is the Avenger system. I don't find it necessary, flexible, or in any way fun at all. While it is not there to be 'fun', it very easily obliterates what fun you could have with PK on the Prime.



I must kindly disagree and say you have gone just an inch too far. All of those changes were not necessary - they were just a supposedly easier and more 'PR friendly' way of dealing with the problem, in my opinion. The way you put it, it sounds like a bunch of idiots went too far and you punished everybody because of their actions. Instead of possibly losing a few customers because they honestly broke the rules, you simply imposed a harsher system - which detracted from a major element of Lusternia.


I agree to all of this. However, when the only visible victory in IRE's games ever is one that demoralizes players.. what choice do I or anybody else have when we want to lash out at a city or commune? I told you my idea regarding conflict: objective and reward-based PK and quests that attacked a city in one visible stroke. One of my random and likely burnt out ideas is that the communes and city struggle to, through three or four different methods, to control a monument somewhere off Prime or maybe even on Prime. This monument takes power from the nexii at 0:00 (a small portion that wouldn't hurt drastically even if it stayed like that for weeks) - and then redistributes a portion of it to the controlling organization of the monument. Obviously, that's a rough and terrible idea - but it's an example of an objective-based conflict. It allows for three types of players to do what they enjoy and help their organization. It also makes power a continually central portion of Lusternian conflict as it was supposedly meant to be.

Other ideas include quests to harm power, quests to hurt Planar denizens, ways to control portions of planes temporarily.

I would love to see some of Desitrus' ideas implemented. Automated Klang, controlling benefits like I just listed.. these are ways to keep fighters a little more happy.

Oh, psh. Xavius and Estarra agree on most things that don't involve the management of Glomdoring.

Classleads in Imperian were like once a RL year though from what I was told. I like the once a month thing. Some parts I don't agree with but having to deal with crazy OP crap for a RL year would put me on edge.

@Estarra: I understand totally on what you said. I do think though that the sea conflict got canned too early. I think that just the minor tweaks to Ladantine (him keeping track of the amount of fish you have already given him, and making him stronger) could have sufficed. Maybe the only other thing would be to spawn more than 25 devilfish per RL hour. Maybe spawn 50-100 per RL hour and then let it roll. That would have solved the demoralization of on org simply just killing Ladantine, then giving the other org another 4-6 hours to get Ladantine back up with fish and simply going in and killing him again.

I really wish you would reimplement it with the changes you made right before it was kind of closed down. It would give some people at least a little conflict on a scheduled basis which is not inside a nexus world.

As for nexus world stuff, I thought the real battles were still acting buggy and haven't been tweaked yet to work, so not many people can participate in that yet. I personally don't care much for the battles, but I think it goes back to jinsonjolt not working on ships docked in your nexus world dock. If that would actually work (since I would consider it off prime), then people could actually jinsonjolt the ships off leave the attackers stuck (which actually most people who have big ships have a whistle, so they could get it back if truly needed). This would make it so the attackers could not just run into their ship and hide out for a bit. Or mass dominate people into their ships and the like. Jinsonjolt working on docked ships in nexus worlds should be looked into. I heard it wasn't a bug, but I would consider it one.

I'm 90% sure jinsunjolt works on ships docked at nexus worlds. My ships have used it a number of times.

You sure? It could have been fixed, but I remember asking Xenthos about it when I spent 30 mins trying to jinsonjolt a ship out of a nexus world, he laughed at me and said it wouldn't work because they had nexus worlds considered as "prime" and jinsonjolt will not work on "prime" docks, like celest, mag, seren and gloms main docks. If it was changed, it was one of those ninja changes. I hope an admin can confirm this to make sure it was changed (gosh I hate ninja changes, I love knowing when something like that has been tweaked to work)