Catarin, almost all of what you said is true, but it's not the whole story. Maybe it's because you're thinking of MMOGs whereas I'm thinking of fighting games (Sirlin talks a lot about both Street Fighter style games and WoW style games but I think "play to win" is much more applicable to the former than the latter.) The best of these games are painstakingly tuned by a very skilled team over a long period of time, matchups tested, hitframes adjusted and so on and so forth. Lusternia is a morass of random changes from a mixture of envoys with a clue, without a clue, and with a clue but uncaring and wanting to be more overpowered. The admin are also simply not as good at game balancing than the expert crew you have in charge of the fighting games Sirlin talks about. This is not necessarily a slight to them but it goes towards the point that comparing the two genres is not that useful. Remember ground sap? Right. There's also the part where a whole guild gets to buy wins, and where you might have to invest massive amounts of time grinding your character to get them to a higher level so they can tank better.
Basically, all of these factors and the fact that you can't change over readily without risking bridge-burning and so on (Shuyin is a great example of a top combatant who doesn't change much, Geb has been a whole 3 guilds ever, abandoning one because autofighting didn't appeal to him, etc.) , the monetary investment... these all contribute towards Lusternia -as a competitive game- being a joke. It is a roleplaying community with the bare bones of a competitive game filled with substantially less competitive material as its substance. Basically, playing to win is not a philosophy suited to Lusternia. Nor would street fighter where unnerfed akuma was legal and every other character got his low fierce which rotated between them every couple months and changing characters cost you £30+ and was subject to approval depending on how abusive you were when playing your last character and the analogy only stretches so far here but hopefully you can see what I'm getting at.

I am all for playing to win in games where it's appropriate and would gladly take a beating from anyone who knew how to kick my arse, abusively or otherwise, at GGXX#Reload or something (for want of practice I'm bad at most fighting games, that one I have a clue at least.) I am not all for it in Lusternia and believe some kind of restraint should be exercised.

Again, I have to disagree. The IRE games are focused around being competitive fighting games. Whether they achieve that goal of depth or end up being shallow is of course up to those who are designing the skills but it doesn't change what the games are. The skills are focused around PvP. The most attention by far is given to PvP. It is a PvP game. In my opinion.

Now of course there are other things to do in the game but that doesn't change what it is at the core and what it is advertised as being. It is set up as competitive game you should be trying to "win" even more so than you would in an arcade fighter. Because if you don't win, your not going to have a lot of fun. When you lose all your supernals/demon lords there is a consequence. You can't just ignore it. When you die in a fight, there is a consequence. There is no reason whatsoever that you should be doing anything in Lusternia except trying to win. Unless you have the idea that you as a player have some responsibility to ensure that other players are having fun.

Restraint is a lovely concept but as long as there is no benefit whatsoever for restraining yourself, it's not going to be something you see except from the true blue "scrubs". There is not even community censure for abuse. Thoros is a perfect example. He plays to win. He will use whatever "cheap" tactic he has in his arsenal to do it. He will lead 3 a.m. raids every night. He will drain all your power if you let him. He will abuse the hell out of whatever he can until it gets nerfed (great pentagram to kill guards). And he's successful at it, he's a pretty well respected member of the Lusternia community, and the linchpin to Magnagora's ability to compete. Narsrim is another perfect example of this except he's much less respected. I assume because he's not really as friendly as Thoros can be when he wants to be.

This kind of leads to an alternative topic of double standards and hypocrisy amongst the playerbase but that's just boring as everyone suffers from it. But my point still stands that Lusternia IS a competitive game (whether it's shallow or has depth), people are encouraged to play to win, and it is "scrub" like behavior to whine about the "cheap" factor instead of trying to figure out how to counter it. And if it's not counterable, obviously see about tweaks.

No, it is not a one to one comparison with a game like street fighter obviously but the concepts are applicable.

Lusternia is like a very small ecosystem, or a small, isolated community on an island. It's composed of relatively few people who are ultimately interdependent on one another. Taking an attitude like in that article is like, if on that island, there was no law against public defecation, and some person decides that one day, they themselves are going to just start squatting down and taking a dump wherever the "spirit moves them". They're going to loudly rationalize this that there is nothing in their social system that explicitly stops her/him, beyond a vague, amorphous sense of common decency. Furthermore, it saves time, as you would have to walk to the edge of the settlement every time you had to go if you followed said decency. Since he/she knows where they pooped, they'll never have to clean it up, step in it, and can choose where to go so they don't have to deal with it. Hence, they win at their civilization.

So, game theory tells us that the dominant strategy in such a situation is to follow suit. Soon, everybody is pooping wherever they want to. The tragedy of the commons sets in, and soon, wherever you look, people are ignoring decency, pooping wherever they feel like it, and the entire settlement looks and smells like a giant toilet. Soon, people decide they don't really like living in a poopopolis, and start to leave for other islands. The die hards who don't leave start to suffer from attrition of disease and old age, and the society slowly devolves into a squabbling group hairless, poo flinging primates. The small, self contained community has been forever destroyed.

The moral of the story is, while you can use ethical egoism to rationalize acting like a turd in many situations, it doesn't make you any less of a :censored:head.

Also it can be incredibly destructive to smaller communities that don't have the capcity to absorb the inevitable ill effects of pushing the costs of your own behavior off on to society, whereas a very large community can withstand this better, to an extent. Lusternia is a fairly small community. Try and poop where you are supposed to.

I guess it comes down to what we see the games as being then. I can agree at least in theory to the idea that the quality of the game as a competition is irrelevant to whether it should be played as such or not, but I still think Lusternia's merits as a roleplaying (or rather, immersive) community far outweigh its merits as a competitive game, and that expecting it to work as the latter is doomed to failure. If you believe the opposite (which you may or may not, I won't presume to guess) then I guess those premises are too much bother to go into.

Btw, the fact that it's advertised as a competitive fighting game doesn't really change the reality of it. You could advertise street fighter as some kind of highly limited RPG where you pretend to be Dhalsim but I suspect it is better off played as a fighting game where instead of characters you have easily identifiable hitboxes with lists of numbers and commands you can visualise geometrically.

Anyway, again you won't agree on this since you see Lusternia as a competitive game at heart, but from my perspective it's not scrub behaviour because players aren't experiencing fair or competitive conditions to begin with. You can't have scrub behaviour in a roleplaying game like D&D either because it isn't a question of winning a balanced game and getting all the loot. Obviously the deficiencies in a D&D game are deliberate rather than failure to invest money/time/a system into Lusternia but the comparison holds because it's insufficiently related to skills the game is testing and far too related to consequences external to a given fight.

I should also note that Thoros' and Narsrim's "play to win" behaviour gets stuff nerfed -all the time-, by the way - it just goes to show that Lusternia isn't equipped to deal with that kind of thing. It's the whole game, not just "the playerbase" as seperate from the game.

As for restraint, I suppose there is something naive in imagining that the game would be better if people exercised it because there will always be a couple of clowns that don't and if they comport themselves properly they get away with it like Thoros. The fact Lusternia has no way of dealing with these problem players has something to do with it too, and I guess that could enhance the illusion of it being a competitive game.

Anyway, fun discussion and will post again in the morning if you've replied.

EDIT@Akui: Your point is correct with regards to players acting like arseholes, although Lusternia seems to have a high enough turnover and enough good qualities as a roleplaying community that bullies will never run out of fodder, but you need to be careful not to conflate two seperate types of playing to win here: playing to win in a specific fight, and playing to win Lusternia overall. As Catarin implies by talking about these two things together the people who do the former often do the latter, but there is a difference in that someone playing to win in a given fight may not have any interest or satisfaction in making people quit or whatever. The problem is on a smaller scale, and people aren't necessarily arseholes for doing the former - which isn't to say that the game is equipped to deal with it or that it wouldn't be better without it, of course.
And now really goodnight!

This right here is where the problem arises. Because Lusternia has a strong PvP component, but is not solely a PvP game, having a shallow PvP system is not advantageous. Moreover, having a system that only has a couple top-tier character choices has the same non-PvP consequences. There's really no reason it has to be one or the other. Lusternia's playerbase really depends on it being more than one thing. If you need proof, go look at the latest installment of GodWars. KaVir's work is always legendary in the PvP MUD arena, but its peak playerbase is about 20 once you subtract out the people who AFK for days on end and the clan-run bot characters.

And what Shiri said is absolutely right--balance here is not like balance there. Not only does balance need to be distributed (which it doesn't in arcade fighting games, or even RTS's like Starcraft), but balance here is approximated more than acheived. For the game to thrive, we have higher baseline standards, fewer resources, and generally less concern for actually getting there.

I agree with you to some extent and I am not trying to say that the game is better treated as a purely competitive game vs. an immersive roleplaying community. I am simply commenting on how it is set up and the irrational nature of the "cheap tactics" argument. If the goal is to win the game - and the goal IS to win the game or at least to not lose it because there are very real and very tiresome consequences if you fail in this regard - then players should be expected to play to win. If this is NOT the kind of behavior or culture that Lusternia is going for then some serious time and effort needs to go into determining how to change it so that kind of behavior is not the most logical to succeed.

As it is, to most enjoy the game as it currently stands taking a play to win mentality will likely be a better route to go.

Ahem. That is going to end up changing soon but yeah.. always been a Nihilist. If I went for the 'most powerful' I would have gone BC or AL Ur'guard. I go where I think I will have fun, and just try to work with that, if changes are needed I can live with that too. I have been doing it for years.

WRONG.

If Talkan wanted to run or wait for 10p to be back before attacking he could have done so and nothing Revan could do would stop that. It was his fault and mistake to attack with 0p right after truehealing.

I love it! Learn to read. I wasn't being serious. I just like poking at you, it's like poking a bear. It's fun when I can actually predict your responses. "Nail biting rage" much?

My opinion about bards has not and will never change, despite whatever you make up. They do too much damage, the old glamours was fine. Nor was I being serious about damage runes, I think they are kind of silly and are only for people who want to pwn people with one macro...but otherwise warrior damage generally sucks(though Vathael does just fine without them...hmmm). But then again, I also think rushing is fine as it is, it's quite easy to see them use it and to move rooms or spam hindering skills. I also find it really ironic when the "top tier" warriors claim they can beat anyone with an unartied weapon (Geb, Desitrus...off the top of my head), then stack hundreds and hundreds of dollars on them anyways. I know Geb specifically has said combat should be balanced at the top tier, so if top tier unartied warriors can supposedly beat anyone...why do they "need" arties? Just something I've been wondering.

That being said, since you are just going to get snotty about things...you really only care about balance as long as it's in your favor. Just my opinion. See: Trueheal/Lich

I think this thread needs to die. Shamarah, bring on the LOLcats

Psh Cat fights > lolcats

Why do I even start these things if you boys aren't going to enjoy them.

Burf durf. I wike to pwut obvious bawbs on my posts and hopes da peoples get supa angry! Here's a question for you:

Why does anyone do anything in this game? Why would any class buy a credit? Why do you buy credits at all? Why are credits even available? Oh, right. Supporting the game. I suppose we should just all not buy credits, right?

I'll gladly go toe to toe with Vathael, he hits me with broads for something like 300 damage, oh boyeeeeeee. If you had any Physical DMP you would also shrug off normal warrior damage.

Where do we say we "need" artis? People say warriors "need" artifacts to do the same damage other classes can achieve with just their spec lines. In some cases, that is actually true. Physical DMP is extremely high. The difference is, we say that we can win without artifacts because we can, but why limit yourself? This goes back to that "playing to win" article someone linked before. Sure, I can win without them, but why bother? I don't see Ixion and Thoros sheathing their artifacts during raids and laying about with normal weapons. Giant fights are a nuclear arms race.

I have paid less to Lusternia than I have in MMO subscription fees. The funny thing is, you can work up gold and earn credits through events and artisinal/bardic. I did custom forgings for 20 cr a pop for a lot of people.

I do so love your posts though. They are tasty and laden with jealousy and catty internet drama queen action.

Kisses, snugglybumpkintoes.

This is the internet Celina, REAL catfights are only a click away.

It's been stated more times than I can count that warriors "need" artifacts to be competitive. Though I'm glad you admit you play to just pwn people and not for the actual game. That's fine, I don't care one way or another, most people are just too deluded to admit to that. Vathael does far more to cloth warriors, he does 900 or so a swing to me and I'm pushing 70ish physical DMP. And trust me, I am not jealous of any of the artie whore in the least. I've guild hopped and re transed several skills 4 or 5 times, if I wanted to be an artied to hell warrior I would have been one by now. It just dosen't appeal to me, but I've stated it 100 times before...this is a game. Enjoy it as long as it's not at the expense of others.

Just don't call yourself the best and claim you can beat anyone without your arties, then use them. It's ridiculous. You don't see Thoros or Ixion claiming they can beat anyone without them. Maybe they can, but they have the sense enough to understand how dumb that sounds when they use them all the time.

I am a drama queen though. It's fun

edit: none of that was a "bawb" at you...it was just repeating things that you have claimed. Calm down.

I have defeated people who are considered top tier without artifact weapons. I have also pointed out that artifact weapons only really come into play when fighting other highly resistant warriors with very good healing. Now do warriors do as much damage as other classes without artifacts, well that depends on the person being targeted. Still, warriors do have another choice besides damage and with effective use of their skills, can defeat any other class with mundane weapons. Though I will duel and/or spar a person without my artifact weapons, I will pull out my artifact weapons in group fights where it is critical to eliminate numbers as quickly as possible. Even under those circumstances, the only people who go down quickly are ones who were pretty easy to defeat even when using mundane weapons.

There are some players who can deal with artifact fighters pretty darn well. One very example of that was Nirtti. She knew how to use her demesne to its greatest potential, giving her the offense and defense she needed to survive people who have artifacts. Last, my reason for using artifacts is simple. I use them because I paid for them. Again, I am willing to give duels without them and have done so plenty of times, but under normal circumstances yea I am going to use them to take out my enemy as quickly as possible (Enemies good at combat are hard to take out no matter what one uses).

So, I suggest you acquire some artifacts yourself and see if they make you so much better than you are now. I can tell you for a fact that I have told warriors who felt artifacts would make them so much better to go on and get some and see if it changes a thing when they fight me. If their defense remains the same, those artifacts will not change the outcome of a fight with me at all. In my opinion, the true path to being good is to first focus on making a bang up defense. Everything after having a great defense is icing.

I know I am pretty much wasting my time posting this as a response to you, but you did mention my name. I normally seek to Ignore your posts, but it is a bit hard to do sometimes when other people quote you.

I'm perfectly calm schnookums. And yes, they do claim that, you just aren't on the OOC clans where they do it. "I can beat anyone but Geb with bashing hammers." Whose quote do you think that is? The real point is, we say that we can do it without artifacts and then we back it up by doing so. I enjoy combat without the artifacts where it's not just about kicking raids off celestia or killing demon lords. When I join a wargames I use my bashing axe, you can verify if you like.

I have plenty of logs of me killing people pre-arti, heck, even pre-tri-trans. You like to ignore points in order to justify your arguments and hope people notice, it's a cute debate style! Unfortunately, "play to pwn nubs" and "retaliating with like-force" is not the same thing. In group fights, it's all or nothing, or have you not noticed? I'll do the duel thing, sure. But when Seven people target the same person, what strategy are you employing? It's not chess, it's brute force.

I find the "close my eyes for a bit and open them after it is all over" method works well. This is of course if the "pray they do not notice little old me" method fails.

How'd this topic get turned against me? =\\ I don't even have runed broadswords, they are normal 180/x/180 broads. I might do 300 damage to a warrior, but guess what, that's why I don't use broadswords against a warrior unless it's in groups. Desitrus and I have gone at it, I recall one instance in Muud during the Raz event where him and I threw down. I don't recall if I killed him or not but I hit slit lock and he kept moving away. I think the outcome was I caught up with him in a room with with some symbiotes and I impaled him and the symbiote(s) killed him... though I wouldn't say that for certain. I don't have many artifacts so I don't think I really count as an "artied up warrior". As well, I'll agree, that skill does not come from artifacts because I have killed many people that have artifacts and they didn't phase me. Skill comes with knowledge of the system. I'm not going to say I'm some badass because I don't see it as that, I'm still learning and working on my system every time I find flaws or a better way to do things. I too have killed people with hunting rapiers as opposed to scimitars. It's the strategy you go into the fight with that you work toward that makes things come out correctly if all goes well. I do think warrior v. warrior some extent of artifacts are required to get you anywhere if they heal anywhere near decent. (Unless you are BC i.e. Ceren. ) Not to seem like I'm bragging, but a good example of this is I went into the arena with Shikha and told her I was going to go smoke a cigarette real quick that she could start whenever and she had a good 3-4 minutes of hitting me with no offense on my part and I came back to the fight with 800 wounds on each arm that I didn't heal for some reason. Other than that I was completely healed in every other aspect. At any rate, I'm just running on now so I'll end it and you can put the pieces together and come to your conclusions.

Psh, it was you AND livictus, we didn't get to face off solo. Then I got pewpew'd by parasites. I still have the log, it was like 4k instantly, things are brutal.