A place for those in the Death poll thread to stop the hijacking and discuss the high cost of combat in Lusternia and how to fix it.

Guess these were false arguments for the sake of derailing the other thread.

I actually agree. When I ask how to be a better fighter, all the top fighters shrug their shoulders and say "buy ZMUD and a system". Which doesn't really answer my question.

The need for a system is based on the complexity of IRE combat and is something that simply cannot be changed - the cost for entering combat regarding this aspect cannot be changed.

That said, there is one problem unique to Lusternia (of the IRE games) that can (and should) be changed: the cost of skills. Skills should be combined together into larger skills (with the less useful abilities simply removed) and/or skills should be transfered to mini-skills, requiring a much smaller investment from the player. People who are omnitrans should just receive the credit-equivalent of extraneous lessons.

For those of us who can't program to save our souls, requiring a system for combat is really disenfranchising us from combat. While Forren's trigger lines are marvelous, they don't do anything for those of us who don't know how to use them. Lusternia may be free to connect to, but it is not free to play because eventually you have to spend money to be able to participate in combat (unless you go through that agonization of programming Nexus, or use MUSH and know how to program it.)

I would -love- to see everyone provided with a skeleton system-- a few autosips and checks, but very little else. At least with that we can see how to get started so we can hopefully build upon it.

Ethelon's system costs 113k and is on a free client. That's not exactly cheap, but you can grind out 113k faster than you can make a system from scratch.

Skills are an issue, though. Most guilds don't have a good kill condition until fabled, some need trans something, and the poor wiccans pretty much need two trans skills as a base line. That is expensive. I would love to see some way to decently kill people shifted down to the expert-gifted range for everyone.

I like that idea.

How do you make a kill condition feasible at fabled without making trans useless though?

Well, I have three useless trans skills, so eh. I used fury against raiding Serens yesterday just for fun.

But most guilds have two ways to kill. Celestines have judgement, which I believe is in the right range. Master music is a (poor) kill condition, so that's fine. Thornlash, sacrifice, chasm, preserve, toadcurse, all of those could stand to get dropped in the ranks.

well for warriors all the kill conditions are the trans skill.

I thought you meant adding in kill condition skills by fabled.

Would you still trans your skills if you could be killing people at fabled? (fabled is still pretty high, isn't it?)

Druidry's usefulness pretty much peaks at swarm. Most people learn it all the way to mythical or trans if they can.

Warrior specs I don't know through and through like I do other things. My non-trans blademaster gets kills by stacking bleeding affs all over. My trans axelord has two pretty much equally viable kill conditions. I don't know how you'd pull it off with bonecrushers or pureblades, though. You have the delayed gut kills that're slated for upgrades, but as they are now, they're worse than thornrend.

No they aren't. For Blademaster at least, all the kill conditions are in mythical and below.

Haymaker is not a kill condition.

Ditto for Bonecrusher. Pulp sucks.... 8 power and it does NOT bypass parry or rebounding unlike doublecrush for 4 power.

Fabled to Transcendent is almost as many lessons as Inept to Fabled.

O rly?

Some reson I thought brainbash and burstorgan and pulp all came at trans, or over 50% mythical.

Heh, thank god they don't or I'd never have even gotten into defending-type pvp.

I think behead is at 66% mythical... been a while since I was learning that stuff, but for some reason 33/66 is ringing a bell.

Behead is 66% mythical.

It's nothing new to IRE games, certainly, and most of us knew this going in. If you use the right client and know the right people, you can get a really good deal on a combat system. Even if you choose to create your own, there are plenty of people that will help you learn at least enough to create the skeleton system you mentioned.

I definitely agree that the cost of learning all one's skills is very high in Lusternia, higher than any other IRE game. In Achaea, it took me quite a long time to reach omnitrans, even with the miniskills being half as much. In Lusternia, it takes roughly 50% more lessons to reach omnitrans, including the skills that provide no abilities (Magic and Resilience) or little added usefulness (Riding). If the cost gets changed, there will need to be credits refunded to those of us who have already paid for the skills, as was already mentioned.

Equipment costs will vary between archetypes and they're generally much higher for warriors than mages, in any game, but obtaining gold in Lusternia is so much easier than in other games. About the only way I could think to lower the costs for a warrior would be to make the forging commodities more plentiful and less expensive, if that's even feasible.

Like I said in the other thread, the biggest issue with players in Lusternia and being able to contend with anyone is lessons.

The complaints I hear and have ever heard from players is not at all about EXP, it is "If only I had such and such skill I could have helped more.", "I wish I had enough lessons to get this much needed skill so I could do more."

Lusternia is almost double any other IRE for lessons to omnitrans, but you get the same amount of lessons as any other IRE, forcing you to have far less lessons in the long run to spread out while needing far more skills.

Not everyone can afford piles of credits. For many people getting omnitrans through credits is an ordeal in any other IRE, in Lusternia it is a burden due to the extra amount one needs. Add to that some guilds, most especially warriors and to some extent monks now, need to also add on artifacts to that list of credit purchases and you really have a feeling of pushing a boulder up hill. Which is a real drive to find someplace less costly to be involved.

Very few people actually care they lost 3% or 4%, they care that they don't have the ability to help well enough and the main reason for this is because you need to spread lessons out much further in order to help effectively. If you want to be involved in combat, you have a a number of spread out skills to learn, your guild skills (granted every IRE you have the tri-trans need), as well as skills in combat, environment, and discipline. Then you need to consider if you want to be able to help influence in village revolts and what skills you need to learn there. Then we have aethercraft as well, if you want to do more than be a passenger and you wish to help your Org in weakenings via aetherships, that's another lesson sink. Top that off with trade skills and it almost makes you want to pull out your hair trying to figure out how best to spend the few lessons you have.

The fact there is a lot to do in Lusternia is a good thing, the fact it is much harder to get involved in those things is not.

Double the lessons gained per level, double the neo-credits gained at their intervals, make it retroactive, and players will actually have a chance to learn some of the skills they need, the learning curve won't feel so harsh, and people will feel like they can do something.