Merp, a crap. She's here to nerf me.

PPK head is harsh, but only if you don't stance your head for the most part. I would not be overly worried about it though, because if the changes to monks go through then there will be something new to experience, rave about, and/or complain about. Will also mean the end of the automatic offense, which I think will be good for some monk players and bad for some others. I personally am looking forward to it, and may even become a monk again to have fun with the new combat system.

Edit:

Arix, you do know that Raziela looks like an 11 or 12 year old girl? I suggest you read her description sometime before you guys kill her again, to see for yourself.

I think it is lame to do something that does not cause aggression but still impacts a fight. I do not care about if something is a duel or not, personally I find the idea of a duel out of the arena silly. If you are going to team up, do so in a real manner, do not hide behind the Avenger.

If I saw a log of a celest player doing this I would also call it a lame thing to do. I am surprised it is even allowed.

That's like saying you should have to declare someone to reflect them or give them lichseed. That's just nonsesne.

1. When i saw Talkan's defeat on deathsight, i jsut knew a log will be posted shortly

2. In the log i posted on lack or raves, I survived a ppk when i stanced head.. I was lucky then, talkan was not so lucky here

(and oh.. Revan, you can kill a lot of people so maybe stop jumping with ixion or whoever.. just jump 1v1. It would be more enjoyable for both of us. I hardly have enough time to bash and being forced out of the prison cause you and some other is coming is pretty hard on my playing experience )

but you do

Enthralled might have a point in saying that if if I jump Geb, then Celina shields me, Geb should be able to pwn Celina without avenger getting in the way.

That said, Shikha probably A) wasn't thinking about that and shouldn't really have been expected to in what looked to her like a crisis situation. I find it unlikely that she was "abusing" anything on purpose. We used to get people people dragging around SDs for choking their gank targets (though not often) so an innocent "is Revan in danger? Let me shield him while I assess the situation" doesn't seem much to complain about.

EDIT: also, I can't imagine how you would do it within the general confines of the system. I wouldn't want shielding someone while bashing to count as a declare on everyone, or even declare on my noob ally that declared and attacked someone for no reason. People already complain when they manually defend someone and that declares all the people the defended person has declared (and the complaints are justifiable.)

Geb, you do know I'm a Glom, right? I suggest you look at HONORS before you make silly comments.

Also, I don't think I've ever been in on a Raziela raid. Japhiel and I think Methrenton, yes, and possibly Elohora, but not Raziela

I don't keep up with when you leave one community or not. It is not like your character is some mover or shaker in game, and people really needed to keep in eye on him. So no, I did not know you were in Glom and did not feel it was important enough for me to log on to the game to use 'honors' on you before I made my post. My statement was an edit to my original post and so it was really just an after thought, brought on by seeing the image you posted.

I'm noticing a lot of personal attacks on this thread.

I hope that you can govern yourselves and calm down a bit, or else we may have to do things the hard way.

As much as I respect that guy and most of his articles, it doesn't work here. Lusternia is a persistent roleplaying world where actions have consequences (usually for other people). It is not a game of street fighter which lasts a couple of minutes at best and is then over.

There is also a massive cost of several kinds in order to start using abusive strategies. If I want to play broken Sagat instead of Dhalsim then I can. If I want to play a broken ur'guard instead of a Cantor I really, really can't (and I certainly can't change back if ur'guard get fixed in a "patch.")

Plus Lusternia bugs out and the designers' intentions "break" a hell of a lot more than in your standard quality arcade fighter.

I don't necessarily agree. It's a game, and in the end, you only get as mad as you let yourself from playing it. Roleplay environment it may be, but combat is just the act of pitting your skills against those of another - on even or uneven terms.

Unlike console games, where broken elements of the game have to be "banned", Lusternia has a dynamic system that allows top fighters to point out obvious imbalances, and address them. We also have an administration that has proven itself to be more than willing to take our opinions into account when changing game dynamics. Even if something is "broken" in Lusternia, it probably won't stay that way for long.

My point is - in the end, combat is a skill based game, and everyone should use whatever is available to them to obliterate their opponent. A disappointing majority of the time, the playerbase here complains about something without really trying to come up with a way to deal with it. I'm not necessarily referring to what's happening in this thread, I just think that people in the Celest/Mag side of the game take it way too personally, instead of treating combat as a competitive sport.

I'm not going to say "it's just a game", because I'm accustomed to playing other games (heh, not this one) at high levels of play, and I take losing very personally, but that frustration should be channeled into finding a way to deal with the situation, instead of complaining about game mechanics or tactics.

*grabs some popcorn for the epeen jousting*

I went to the discussion thread about the above article and felt my brain cells slowly dying off in agony.

I don't see why the fact Lusternia can technically fix things means it's okay to abuse them while they're not fixed. Obviously hyperactive and rushing are out of line. They will eventually be fixed. However...they haven't yet. Now monks with hyperactive and rushing could obviously abuse this but that wouldn't be fun for anyone else. It's not like there aren't a bunch of these things all over the place too. And if you get punked by some of this BS you're essentially down hours of bashing. I'm glad you stayed away from "it's just a game" because it isn't really, it's slightly more than that because of the investment factors.

I guess if you wanted you could go ahead and abuse stuff in arenas all you want and I wouldn't be able to argue with it on anything more than general dissatisfaction, but I'm not sure we really want combat to be like that here. It takes ages to fix things and new stuff breaks all the time.

EDIT: Looking at that post I think I'm putting my points forward weakly, let's have another go.

1. Inability to play the game from any side easily with nothing lost but the skill gained from experience.
2. Investment in result of winning or losing, encouraged by the way the game is set up and external to the factors of the fights themselves.
3. - woops, doorbell, maybe later. Ciao.

I disagree. Well, not with the bugs thing though given "bugs" have been exploited in the past when it wasn't obvious they were bugs and the obvious bugs are generally quickly fixed so I guess I disagree with that too.

No, you can't switch around characters with great ease but you can do it. And plenty of people switch around for the best advantage to their strategies. They'll switch race, skillset choice, class, and city/commune. This is exceedingly common. How many top-tier fighters are you aware of that stick stubbornly to a particular race or guild because of RP reasons?

Regardless, I think the essence of the article is pretty relevant to this discussion and Lusternia culture as a whole. The majority of players are in a very odd mindset that is contributed to by the nature of the game and updates and it prevents all but a couple of people who get past that kind of thing from really unlocking their full potential as fighters. Here's what I mean:

Player A fights Player B. Both consider themselves to be good fighters, both have a measure of pride in their fighting ability.

Player A beats Player B using skills they know Player B is not good at countering. Player B cries cheap, gets their forum buddies to agree its so cheap and that Player A probably is a horrible person IRL anyway and well, what can you do against that tactic! It's certainly not my skill level, it's that the other person is using "cheap" tactics.

Does Player B improve as a fighter because of this interaction? No. They just blame the cheap tactics, console themselves that they are still a much better fighter than Player A because Player A has to use these "cheap" tactics.

This is further encouraged by people whining about these cheap tactics and taking it to their envoys or the admins or whatever to have them removed. Which is silly because more of these tactics will ensue with the new stuff.

What would be far more beneficial if instead of people screaming "cheap" every time they die to something, they actually used the log section for its intended purpose. "I'm having a lot of trouble dealing with this tactic. Anyone have any advice?" If no counters can be determined that still allow a reasonable offense then it's quite possible that's something that needs tweaking. But those are kind of rare

If you're playing soccer and you realize that the goalie is completely incapable of defending the left side of the net are you going to not kick to the left side of the net? Is the goalie going to demand the left side of the net be taken away because he can't defend it? Bit silly.

The author of the article is correct. If you are crying cheap all the time instead of trying to improve and not using your own skills to the fullest of their ability because you think they're "cheap" you are a "scrub" and you will have trouble truly competing at the top levels of competitive virtual fighting. Which may or may not be your goal so it may not matter but it doesn't make it less true.

I'm not really sure what the people are who complain about "cheap" tactics and then use their own extensively with weird justifications. Just hypocrites I suppose.

Celina, your opinion means nothing to me.

Either way, I do care about balance and arti-runes on damage swords is not enough to kill anyone good. I was glad for the changes to demigods. Most warriors will tell you that they use damage weapons in group combat. I suppose in your mind, it's 'lame' to even buy runes? I've spoke to the fact that it's a shame warriors feel the need to purchase runes to compete. Are placing runes on wounding weapons lame? And inquisition, a 12p three-step move that strips defs (doesn't strip lichseed now) is overpowered? Okay. So, any ideas on changing it to where it's a better skillset with synergy in relation to warrior affs or Celestialism? No? Probably not, as you ignored that statement before.