sounds like wildnodes v.2.0 to me

Is that a good or bad thing?

It depends on how you look at it. Right now, wildnodes is a pre-prepping numbers game. In which if there is enough people who care about the power wildnodes would bring in a certain org, they will bother to go. It is normally ended up by cities dominating it though and communes assisting cities by the end.

So I am not sure if Revan means this as good or bad. But even during wildnodes, the whole mass linking to try and kill people technique is used, and I am sure it would be double that during this, just to try to lower demi's and ascendents essence reserves.

wild nodes has its pros and cons. So will this, and the fact that they are similar means they will have identical pros and cons

Note: I don't factor the rewards obtained into either pro or con

Hm, that's a good point there... Maybe the Domotheos becomes aligned with prime, making it so that people don't lose essence/xp/whatever and mortals can enter, and when the blessing/curse is released a big shockwave of power blows everyone out of the realm and back to their respective nexi of power (so that people don't get doomed for being there at the wrong time). I just don't like the idea of it being on astral for the aforementioned reason of link-flooding. Plus the shockwave would give a nice ambient feel for the power of the Domothean realm being released


Yes I do think 10 minutes is long. I'm hyperspastic But the gist of my suggestions is to make it an active process rather than chillin going "doot de doo dee doooo..... picking up the globe...... I'm so bored", which is why I greatly favour the quest-like approach to getting these rather than the "sit on the toilet" method as I'm going to call it. Hmm.... maybe allow instant teleports/tesseracts to a globe holder, along with planar shivering and doom when they pick it up? Of course, globes should drop from inventory on death.

Or maybe the creature you have to nick it from is supernal/demonlord-level in power, but must be influenced first (so that a huge group can't 1-shot it). Dunno how well that will go over. Maybe it can be something that the Ascendent/Demigod challenges to single combat, and once they enter the arena (which would basically be in the same room, but both mob and ascendant would be immune to outside influence), people can FOCUS ASCENDANT to help their person out? (low level discipline skill)

Maybe the globe could also be in a puzzle box and you have to solve one of those infernal panel puzzles (REALLY hard to do if there are any distractions, I've found) to get the globe out.

Maybe a combo of one or more of the above? Maybe the task to be done should depend on which Domotheos it's for? That way the influencers and non-pk types can go for the "happy cuddly" Domothean realms like Harmony and Nature and solve puzzles and influence, while fighty fighty types can go into the War and Chaos realms and kill stuff.

I'm just throwing out random ideas here, none of them are guaranteed to have much if any merit.

Of course, if I had my way with things, it'd be orca food rather than globes, and you'd have to go feed the Orcas of Power. But that's just me on 4 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours.

EDIT: Baugh, how is it that four posts get put up while I'm still writing ONE!?

My one issue is this means there would be conflict on Astral at least once per rl day. Wildnodes is nice because it's every few weeks, and lasts an hour and a half max.

Actually, there is a very rational reason, which you'd learn in game-design 101, if there was such a course.

Games differ from unstructured play in the existence of imbalance of power, and in formal "laws" by which a player or team can gain advantage/victory.

Since Lusternia is not designed to allow ultimate victory to any player/team, all its "game-ness" lies in the acquisition of power.

Giving new powers/things to do which only ascendants/demigods can use is the ONLY rational way to keep them involved in the ongoing game.

Wow...

Since when are you so...right?

Maybe one or two or three on the astral plane, with the rest on the Domo-planes. Let the cities and communes go berserk trying to gathr them (from *very* strong mobs, perhaps? Manifestations of the orbs, which you beat into submission?)

This post is not pointed directly toward Exarius, but it was his quote that spawned my reply, which is aimed for the entire thread.



Oddly enough, I am reminded of the ever-present war between the 'casual' and the 'hardcore' in World of Warcraft. To summarize it up, there are nearly identical arguments in this thread that there are over on the WoW forums: "Why should development time be wasted on something 98% of the population will never see".

What does NOT strike me as identical is either game's definition of 'end-game.' A MUD is not an MMORPG, whose primary focus is on attaining the maximum level, and beyond that, the highest item level of loot available in dungeons and raids. There are alternate paths to attaining the 'high item level' (such as PvP), but 'success' in the MMO realm is almost entirely defined by your character's 'lewtz'.

However...



Lusternia (like most of the IRE realms) does NOT define itself as such. If it were designed as such, the success of your character could be as easily defined as a simple swipe of a credit card.

Your success in Lusternia is not solely tied to one thing, be it character level, number of people slain in combat, number of artifacts, number of shops, or number of leadership positions held.

Is it more demanding to successfully run a city than it is to bash or influence to Demigod?

Is it more demanding to achieve the most honors via quest rewards or to achieve the highest honors via literary/scholarly pursuits?

Is it more demanding to become the most deadly combatant or to become a Planeswalker?

Or to manage the most successful and renowned trade cartels in the realm?

Or to own and manage a powerful aethership, complete with crew?

Or to hold a monopoly on trade goods because of your mercantile skills?



Lusternia would not be Lusternia without these paths. People are drawn to play this exciting MUD for one or more of the above reasons, or possibly some that I missed. The point is that there are many, and that each of the players striving to be among the best at one particular path or another should not be considered 'less important' in the terms of 'keeping them interested enough to stick around.' Frankly that's what the attitude reeks of.

In a MUD as vast and complex as Lusternia is, how can you possibly sit there and say that to their faces?

This is true, but the reality is, that if people are going to have to be fighting for these things, then it is going to be the fighters who decided and have the most influence over, who becomes ascendant.

Lusternia politics are already fighter centric enough.

Thats a bad idea, in my opinion.

I think you want this to become a mini game amongst the demis and Ascendants. Not a new thing that everybody has to focus on.

It might have the extra benefit of pulling the demis and ascendants away from the more "menial" tasks, of power collection, commodity collection, guard raiding etc. And this will allow new generations of players to take over those important roles, and give people things to look forward to. (Soon, player X won't be GM cause they will be a god, and I can take over the position.) instead of (Soon, player X won't be GM because they will get bored and quit, and then I can take over the job)

Good point.

I don't know how I feel about this system especially with the idea of giving even more buffs. It seems to me that the damage changes and weighted stats were added because of the insane amount of buffs present in Lusternia compared to other IRE games. I do enjoy the amount of regens and stat bonuses we get but it was shown these buffs cause an even wider gap between the upper and lower tiers.

Another thing I don't like is the system just seems like Karma blessing 2.0 because of the effects of these blessings. Coincidentally I never liked most of the buffs the Karma system gives as it caters to PKers when I was hoping they would be more toward helping characters influence/hunt mobiles. However, that is a completely different topic altogether.

Also, it seems to me like Ascendants and Demigods would be kind of expected to give blessings out to their respective communities and pressured into something they might not really feel like doing. I could see why Vernal Ascendants may be expected to do so but if I ever bashed up to Demigod (doubtful) I wouldn't want to be pressured by leaders into securing blessings for fighters.

IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE BLESSINGS, PLEASE GIVE US ALTERNATE SUGGESTIONS!!


(We seriously were hoping in posting here that discussion would generate more ideas for blessings.)

Thus Estarra looking for other ideas concerning possible affects that each individual Seal can give so that they might change it up a bit. I'm -still- trying to find an idea to suggest that won't involve making the Seals basically another level of karmic blessings, but all of the one's I think up of that might tie in roleplay-wise might end up overpowered and combat-centric.

For example, I thought about maybe suggesting that some of the Seals react differently whenever they get held by a commune/city Ascendant/demigod. Maybe the Seal of Nature...originally coming from Kiakoda who became immensely stronger (according to the histories anyways) in the forests...maybe the commune who holds that Seal could receive some buffs whenever they're in any forest terrain. If they're still looking for differing levels of buffs, the Minor blessing would only come into effect in any of the given commune's respective territories. The Lesser (Or did I mix this and Minor up?) would extend to forest terrain beyond organizational property but only wyrden/normal according to the commune, and the Greater buff would extend to all forest terrain. Of course the buffs won't exist outside of forests (or it could even have a negative impact when people are out of forest terrain which might be the counterweight since Nature, as I see it, has no direct opposite in the 9 Seals).

Then should a city demi/Ascendant come to get the Seal, it could affect them in the opposite manner. Buffs in urban areas or whatever the 'natural' environment would be considered as for city-dwelling folk, but it could have the negative impact when they're in non-natural terrain for them.

Again, this could potentially be insanely overpowered, as I mentioned before, but I'd still really like to see a way in which the effects of attaining a Seal could be tied into the originator of the Seal rather than just a level two karmic blessing. :/

Edit: Oh, the city people's natural terrain could either be the tainted or the..uhh...water-type rooms. That would make sense since people can forest/de-forest areas, and folk can taint/flood a place to extend the length of their influence. -sagenod-

Well, I posted some ideas (and fully expected someone to say they sucked, but no one did, so cool beans!) earlier. Here's a few more for Nature. I'll think of the others while I'm at work and post more if I can think of anything.

* Minor - Twice as many commodity quest animals in the land while the blessing is in effect. (twice the normal amount of cows, rockeaters, chickens, etc.)
* Lesser - Poisonists are able to produce more poison from animal corpses. (how much more ?)
* Major - Bless a single herb to skip their hibernation period for that year.

Lesser Blessing of War: Forging times are halved, stacks with Hammer.
Minor Blessing of War: Villages spontaneously produce tons of metal comms at -very- low price. (Gearing up for war, instituting mandatory recycling programs, etc.)
Greater Blessing of War: Protection from insanity on hostile planes. Maybe a bit much, but hey.

@Estarra: Would it be possible to compile the ideas under consideration into a single post that would be kept updated so that people don't have to wade through the entire thread to see if they missed something?

Hrm, I like the idea of just influencing the world. Isn't it kinda that the person in question is drawing more power from the demense of to the Basin? So, in nature there would be more critters, as Noola suggest. Or with war, people deal more damage to various mobs. I'm not sure how to word it exactly, but kinda like the Vernal God attunes himself to the power source and brings back the power needed for various blessings? Kinda like pulling a peice down and there is still lines of power, but they are slowly fading. It affects the Basin itself, because there is too much power?

Go for it! Maybe start a thread for Ascendant Blessing Ideas!