So what do you even want? It's like you're just throwing semi-directed hostility around for giggles.

I decided to stay here because of the roleplay, very strong world set up/lore (best of the IRE, most cohesive... at least from researching all the histories on their respective pages), fun and unique mechanics, interesting crafting system, and a slew of other reasons. Not the least of which is "there are significant restrictions on bored jerks strolling around getting their jollies doling out beat downs to people who would have no chance against them."

Restrictions on conflict favorable to the non-combatant retain players. Jamming it down people's throats to sate the appetites of the fighters is a great way to hemmorage them. Finding ways to let fighters fight other fighters (and I'm sorry, but in a system as complex as Lusternias, beating down non-combatants does not a fighter make- not that you DO that, just... sayin') without wrecking the game experience for people who are unwittingly on the tracks in front of the fighter freight train can't be an easy thing to do.

Am I still that new player who hasn't seen every room in the MUD at least three times and done every quest? Yes. But it's not the physical state of the MUD that makes it worth staying around for. I'd never stick around on Aechea- I know because I tried it. But, really, is the only thing you can think to do bash or kick heads in? You could get involved with rivalries and politics, or create intrigue if you wanted to. You don't have to stand at the nexus and wait for the world to come to you.

/agree

Eh, some of us still do 3v7 raids.

Hey now, that's going a bit too far. I'm confident that Estarra's heart is in the right place: as the creator and head admin of a large game, you'd better care about it if you're gonna stay at the helm for three years. While I don't like the direction that Lusternia's going in and I don't like the way it's being handled overall, the administrators likely have what they think are the game's best interests in mind. In other words, here you're criticizing the wrong thing: you must criticize the actions, not the intent. Talk about how the removal of conflict is driving away the players that get a kick out of fighting other players, talk about how making guards so much stronger makes raiding all but impossible, and talk about how the policy that prevents the admins from actually playing their game prevents them from getting a players-eye view on the situation, but don't make such an outrageous statement that Estarra just doesn't care or try to get involved.

(If that post sounded too positive towards the admins, do let me know and I'll add more sarcasm, backhanded insults, and enhanced truth to raise it to my usual standards of malice.)

Desitrus had a a few brilliant ideas.

I must admit, I'm actually impressed. This gets the Yrael seal of approval!

Which is certain to cause it to be six feet under in an hour or so, but anyway.

I retract any previous statements and officially declare my hatred for these ideas.

I have had a sneaking suspicion that Estarra or one of the Divine on rare occasion create novices to test the response of a particular organization to new players or purely for amusement. Without going into details I’ve run into one novice that seemed to have more access, and was more interested in RP than your traditional alt.

So I’d bet the Creatrix and Co. ™ keep a close eye on the pulse of Lusternia.

Or I could just be paranoid.

Some newbies are from other IRE games, or are alts who didn't find the RP they wanted in their first org and are trying another (or want to see what kind of RP they can get in another). Making lots of alts to test out newbie response is a Bad Thing, after all-- you're taking time away from the real newbies who need it, because people are helping you (or are splitting their attention between a mess of novices all at once, all with different learning speeds).

That said, I'm not saying They never check out how newbie training goes when there aren't novices around needing help-- but I don't believe They would really be doing it "purely for amusement". There are more important things to work on, after all, than mucking about with a guild's ability to help novices.

Just an off thought as to why a fair few people are crying out to make raiding and the like harder, at least from my own point of view.

In the Serenwilde, we don't have that many people who enjoy fighting on a regular, organisational conflict basis (take myself for example - I'm perfectly happy to have an idle 1v1, or defend people from guild/order/commune who've been jumped), but when we have people raiding at every opportunity (Hi, narsrim/ariatas, and to a lesser extent Shamarah), it gets boring and unpleasant - especially given the arrogant and generally unkind attitude of some fighters. So it turns out that those of us with involved enough RP to not be able to let raiders just wander around without a care in the world, while not actually enjoying it for assorted reasons. I'm not actually a huge fan of raiding/raid defense - although the odd skirmish on the border of a village can be fun - it gets boring, repetitive, and counterproductive often enough. People may turn around and say "Why are you champion then?" - but that's because Laysus fits the role, and there aren't exactly people I'd pen to replace him as Champion at current. I mean, I understand that many people enjoy fighting like that, but they seem to not quite grasp that a lot of the people they end up fighting and killing don't, which is either ignorant or selfish and spoils the game for other people.

Yes... we already know this one quite well.

Because it's okay when you're doing it to them, but not when they're doing it to you!

Just another reason to keep Shayle far far far away from Lusternia.

He can't do it as bad now, and the lack of cubix helps.

And I could think of a person or two to take Champ from Laysus.

I've not been involved in offense in a long time, and I'm sure if you look there are posts saying that I agree what Narsrim was doing was wrong, Shammy.

And Krellan: I can see a couple who might, but none who I'd give it to who want it and are particularly suitable.

I seemed to remember a post from you saying that "If you were tankier and could make it through the archway, you'd love to do what Narsrim was doing." However, that was a long, long time ago, and I couldn't find it.

I did find later posts from you saying you realized it was wrong, but most of those were after he quit and had turned on Seren. Still... yeah. Nobody likes it.

No wonder I'm still not in the guild

I wish village revolts would double in frequency. Then I'd seriously consider making a switch. Druid or bard or even Glom. Suppose that would have to depend on how bad choke got nerfed, and how much I'd be to start fights with cities, but assuming bad things for both of those bard or drood would be more likely.

Haii Zenji!

The problem with this sort of mindset is that it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you are holding the Champion position but don't like the duties of the Champion, you're doing your guild a disservice. So long as you are not active in leading/demonstrating/teaching the members of your guild, there will never be anyone suitable to take over. If you really don't enjoy the position, your best options are to become active in the position and train people up, showing them how to raid/defend/etc. properly, or just step down and let someone else grow into it. A good number of Champions have no idea what they're doing when they get the position, but they learn if they are interested. It's really not up to you to pick the perfect person for the job, it's up to you to either do the job, or let someone else do it.

That isn't directed really specifically at you, but I see a lot of people around Lusternia who just seem to hold an office where they don't perform well just to keep someone else from getting it. That, in my opinion, is completely the wrong attitude. The atmosphere of Lusternia would improve dramatically if people who held important positions were all active in the duties of their position. If you don't enjoy it, let someone else do it; even if you don't like them, someone who is interested and tries is always better than someone who holds the job and doesn't like it.

Lusternia's problem is that the playerbase seems to be divided between long-haired roleplay-loving flower children and twitchy competitive gamers jacked up on ritalin that go numb if they go for forty-five seconds without killing something.

When the game has conflict and player-killing and death and mayhem, the latter group is happy, but the former group is pissy. The opposite is true when the game is completely empty of any sort of conflict or competition.

Obviously the solution is to provide conflict but allow players to opt out. Unfortunately, conflict revolves around the cities, meaning that it's impossible to opt out of conflict if you want to have your skills and be part of an org. Therefore, the concept of how conflict works in Lusternia is hopelessly flawed, and only a major review of basic concepts the game is built on could ever fix it.

Ding ding ding! The only way to "fix" conflict in Lusternia is to have conflict that you can opt-out of without hurting yourself too bad. Said conflict, then, has to be interesting no matter how many players are doing it, and it must be limited to certain periods of time where conflict can actually take place. Essentially, the conflict must revolve around capturing non-essential resources from entirely neutral areas, such as what happens in village influencing and wildnodes. Unfortunately, you can't have too much of these things, otherwise people get tired of them or realize that they really aren't gaining anything substantial.

What we really need are more conflicts that involve capturing neutral and semi-neutral objectives, semi-important resources that can be gotten through other venues, and are challenging no matter how many people are playing.

Not really. Given how conflict is connected to PvP, we could make it so that important neutral, semi-neutral and non-neutral resources can be capturable - as long as nobody is forced to have a stake in these things. If you want to participate in conflict, then the outcome of conflict affects you, potentially, it affects you a lot. If you don't, then the outcome of conflict doesn't affect you, but you can't participate.