You know, the subdued commune conflict isn't necessarily a bad thing. It gives a broader range of levels of combat for people to pick from, meaning that Lusternia appeals to a broader range of people. If you want more intense conflict, there's Celest and Mag, after all.

I mean, look at where most of the fighters have been clustered- there always seems to be more serious combatants in the cities. Seren leans pretty heavily on Shuyin for combat much of the time. If the communes were launching raids and such on their own against the cosmic planes on anything like a regular basis, that would be one thing... but they don't.

I really have nothing against the anti-cubix artifact idea (which seems interesting) or discussions about changing ethereal melding policies (which we probably won't do), but this thread is mostly meant to get a an idea of where Lusternia's focus in terms of coding resources should be in a more general sense. While I understand that some individuals have personal grievances against some specific designs, that's not really what would prevent us from working on new systems and ideas.

So to get back on track, what do you feel Lusternia should focus its coding resources on? This should not include new areas (i.e., expanding planes) or monks (already in the works). We've already identified Avenger loopholes and aetherspace, and we are also working on nexus battles. We've heard that some skillsets may be needed to be reviewed, and we've asked the envoys to provide us with suggestions on which skillsets should be looked at. (This is a good place to continue airing concerns on specific skillsets--just make sure your envoys know to look here!)

Influence needs to be viable at 80+

It is easy and they are dealing with inept individuals. But we can continue that somewhere else if you feel the need, since Estarra wants us back on track.


I still think coding resources should be centered on balancing out any blatant edge one org or one group of orgs have over another. Kinda like how Seren/Glom have things that make raiding more difficult than Celest/Mag might have.

Also making bugs (which at this point I guess there aren't any known ones) a priority.

Speaking of bugs, was that Dairuchi Castle quest thing ever fixed. I remember Xenthos saying at some point that there were still problems with that, yet I cannot remember if that was 6 months or even a year ago.

Agreed

Oh yeah, I agree with that too. I missed Doman saying that. I have never actually done much influencing because when I started trying I was around 85-90 and it didn't seem worthwhile to me at all, and there really wasn't much of a reward besides gathering some esteem, which I could just ask someone for and get it anyways.

A skillset that really needs to be looked at. Ecology.

First, fetishes cost way too much power to make. 40 power for a sub par offense. It's a bit extreme.

What it really needs is a wider range of poisons to choose from. Most of the poisons are pretty unhelpful in most situations.

Also, this might sound stupid, but fetish needs to have a way to bypass immunity. I understand that is the point of immunity, but when you have an entire skillset that relies on poisons, it needs a way around things like immunity and trans reslience. Maybe a sting that costs 2 power and makes the target more susceptible to poisons for a set amount of time. Maybe even a way to tell if your poisons have hit or not.

Instead of that, I'd support making ecology a flavour and utility skillset. I'd love to see some greater control over familiars. The ability to deliver items, help you harvest herbs, interesting things. Right now, familiars have to be guarded and left in safe places. It's hard to even use familiars for RP when their death equals 3/4ths of your health disappearing and the ecologist dumping another 10 power for another one. I would love to see a much wider array of familiar choices, and the abilitity to choose what form your familiar takes. Right now it's a "lock your familiar in a dark room" which isn't really what a familiar should be. Maybe a way for the familiar to enter your inventory or perch on your body so that you can actually keep it with you and not worry about it being killed.

What I would REALLY love to see is each familiar with a set of basic skills like web, an attack, a way to stun, some venoms, a bleeding attack...depending on the familiar, and work kind of like a doppleganger in Achaea. You could control it and move it around, attack people with it (but it wouldn't be really powerful), and you can use certain skills through it (nothing like sap, but things like vines and such). Familiars would also need a hefty health boost.

Anyways, I'm half rambling, halfday dreaming. Ecology is kind of a lack luster skillset at the moment. Either keep it as it is and give the familiar some real utility, or overhaul the whole poisons/fetish idea.

edit: Shield > Chaindrag.

Ditto.

For ecology familiars, envoys are very welcome to submit ideas for new pets, as I understand it.

EDIT: And as for the skillset overhaul, as Est has said, Envoys are being allowed to ask for special reports, or something akin to that. Not my area of expertise for sure, but it's definitely something they're able to do. Talk to your envoys!!!

I'm going to chime in my agreement with the high-level influencing people. I still do influence quite a bit at 92, which is the exception rather than the rule. I do for two reasons: one is esteem gathering, which can be sold for quite a bit; two is for a break between hunting rounds while wp regenerates.

I remember seeing a thread somewhere where it was suggested that some high level mobs would deal out dramatics afflictions when influenced. I think this is a neat idea if you have coders looking for projects. But it doesn't solve the problem that you get the same xp whether you influence the mob or kill it, where killing is sped up considerably by criticals. The dramatics support skills like vagabond/sycophant/etc nowhere near compete with the fast kills you can get with criticals.

Are influencing criticals the answer? I don't know. Maybe rescaling where the ceiling is on influencing would help as well. I beg from Ladies and brothers at Tosha in the same number of attacks whether I have 17 cha, looking like royalty, without a demesne or trueheart OR with 19 cha, removing all jewelry, in a demesne and with trueheart. It just seems like the additional skills/buffs aren't giving any advantage beyond a certain level.

Another thing to consider is the risk in influencing. There is really very little. If I know that I can influence a certain type of mob in 7 hits, it'll always fall in 7 hits, there's no mob teaming, there are no afflictions, none of the things that make high-level hunting more dangerous. Seeing mobs gang up on you in an argument would make some sense RP-wise, but you'd have to have some way of rewarding the increased risk (scale xp with # of mobs being influenced at a time?).

That's my two cents. I'd love for influencing to be more viable at high levels.

A couple things.

@ Doman -- QFT. Influencing being a viable way to level at 80+

World Tarot -- sucks as a trans skills. The ability to fling through shields is a useful skill, but the fact it costs 10 power, equilibrium, and lasts a limited amount of time severely limits its utility since you do have to wait for power to regen to carry out some tarot flings. One possible solution is to reduce power cost. Don't know if this would over power the already very useful skillset.

Edit: Maybe if you shortened the equilibrium cost for this specific throw it would be more useful.

@Chaindrag -- I don't have a problem with it because mechanically I see it as a targetted beckon. Would chaindrag need to be balanced against something in Harmony? Possibly. Monk Envoys would know better.

@Cubix jumping in and out -- I don't have a problem with this. When either Ethelon does it on Celestia, or Dysolis does it on Nil. The choice is ours to engage or not.

Not really. People get yelled at, threatened with disfavours, etc if they don't go defend. Further, the cities are -supposed- to have a very close attachment to their cosmic planes. They look to the beings that live there for guidance, and thus.... if they're being threatened... well. Get to it.

I heard mention of cubix-blocking things. I don't think outright blocking is the answer, but maybe have the reality-stabilizing fields cause a cooldown timer instead.

We agree to disagree then. I always defend but the above bolded is the problem. Its the players not the mechanic I think.

Edit: Unless you signed on to a voluntary organization that has a direct objective to defend.

My main thing is, I influence for esteem in Tosha. If I was bashing to my full potential all the time I was influencing, i would be a way higher level, and that's not right

QFT. Players are to blame when threats of disfavours etc, come about. I remember people yelling about Earth Lords, some where threatening, etc. I would just laugh, ignore them and do what I was doing. Since I had been stupid enough to go try and help before. The main thing I learned was, by the time people are yelling about defending another plane, 99% of the mobs on that plane are already dead. So all you are doing is sitting on an empty plane, waiting for repops, or for a group of raiders to come, which since there is nothing to raid when all the mobs are dead normally they don't come.

If Orgs scream to disfavour for not always rushing to defend, I think the citizens of their city/commune should get together and remove the person who is trying to disfavour from power. But that's just me. All in all, people will go defend if they want to, and once they learn how there is nothing to defend by the time they get there, they too might become jaded and not care anymore, but that is their choice, not the org's choice to force them to do anything.

Does anyone else agree that the new phoenix change and demigod/ascendants leaving behind corpses is pretty lame now??

I'm going to take a few moments out of my vacation to pen a few thoughts (so excuse me if this isn't quite as complete as it could be).

I've seen this touched on a bit by others, and wanted to emphasize their points (since a lot of it seems to be getting lost in various other discussions about specific skillsets, or what have you):

There is a very real sense that Lusternia is on the "development track". Things are released, and while they may be examined once very shortly after release, once it's been out a bit "That's the way it is." It's very unlikely to change, because those who were working on it have already moved on to bigger and better (well, shinier) new things. This is great for a new game world, but consider that Lusternia is now over three years old.

There is three years worth of development that has mostly been introduced under this philosophy, and all of the discussions thus far have focused on "taking a break from releasing new things to tweak old bits that may be issues".

This is, itself, not only an issue: It is the issue.

Lusternia needs a consistent focus on existing content as well as new content. An equal amount of effort needs to be put into tweaking, fixing, and playing with the last three years' worth of development as is put towards "the new stuff". This means that if there is one person coding new things, one person should also be in charge of the "existing game and modifications thereof". We are not asking that the introduction of new content be halted! Far from it. However, there is far too much of an emphasis on new content and nowhere near enough of a spotlight on the old. As a part of this, numerous discussions and concerns raised on the forums go completely unanswered. Are they being ignored? There is no way to say from our end whether the concerns are even being heard by those who make the decisions, so whether they are being ignored or not from your end, from our end it really doesn't matter. When there is no response, it looks like it's a player concern that just is "not a concern".

Some examples of this include:
Constructs, effects thereof (the primary example would be the Dark Nest)
Constructs, battling (though this one actually disproves my point early on, as their creator was fiercely devoted to researching the matter and tweaking them throughout, this died off rather quickly due to unfortunate and unforeseen events, and devolved from there. The final tweak to them ended up introducing more issues, and now the issue's back up again)
Aetherspace (flying, aetherbubbles, creatures, ship issues)
Various skillsets (Riding, Dramatics, Crow, etc.)
Miniatures (Anyone remember what these are?)
Ascendance (Issues were raised a few weeks after its release once the issues were first beginning to surface. We were told to wait until it was Transcended, learn all about it, and then bring it up once more for discussion. This was done. The discussion was proceeding with Morgfyre, some ideas were raised and we were told those were the kind of ideas he was looking for. With no further discussion from him, it was just assumed that some of them were going to be tweaked in. Then we find out over a week later that not only has the entire issue been dropped, but it's "not an issue any more". This is a prime example of the concern that this post is addressing.)
Domoths, battling (Tweaked once, and apparently deemed a-okay without any other real discussion or asking how it's going.)
Domoths, rewards (Again, this has been brought up as an issue quite a bit from most of those involved, with no comment whatsoever.)
Etc.

I'm sure many more things can be listed, but really, it doesn't matter what the things are. What matters is the perception that this is the way Lusternia deals with its customers.

I've already given one primary solution, but really, what I think you need to do is to assign one of your Ephemerals to have more of a PR focus. Obviously, you all do a bit of it as part of your other duties, but you need someone who actually can "take the pulse" of the playerbase on a regular basis. There is a bit of a distance between the Administration and the players (something which you foster specifically to try and reduce favouritism, it seems-- I seem to remember you posting that the reason for not letting Divine play characters is because they would want to help the organization that character is in). For the most part, that's a good idea, but it does have its downsides (this distance). Even those who start off as players find themselves naturally distancing themselves from most mortals as time goes on (which is exactly what you want)... but to truly be able to figure out what we want and how to deal with us, you need to do something about the gulf between us. These threads are a start, but even in them, the same problems surface: The issues you don't want to deal with just get ignored.

Another idea would be to appoint two people from each organization as "envoys"-- not for skills and abilities, but for actual game-related things. It would function much like envoys, in that they show up in HELP SERENWILDE for example, and they would work closely with the person who is working on coding / fixing existing game mechanics and features, as well as your PR representative. It should be something separate from envoys, and probably not even allow the same person to do both (to begin with at least), but this would allow you to introduce things, wait two weeks, and then ask a small section of the playerbase from all organizations how the change/fix is working and what problems have arised.

Then your "tweaker" can address those issues, wait a few days, and ask if any more issues came up from that tweak.

This way, you completely destroy the perception that Lusternia is always looking forward, and rarely backward. You shore things up, you strengthen them, and improve them until most of the concerns are rectified. Likely not everything can be fixed, but even so, you'll get a lot closer this way than with the current setup. It will also, at the exact same time, address your "squeaky wheel" syndrome. Currently, the only real perceived way to get the Administration's attention is to keep bringing things up until they actually look at the problem. This can take months, or years-- and isn't pleasant for anyone involved, either the customers or yourselves. Instead, you'll have a small core of customers who bring things to your attention, who can discuss the issue with the dedicated tweaker and/or yourself, and actually return with a response instead of silence. Then, if the thing comes up again later... you now have 9 new people (the 8 representatives and your PR person) who can post with points why it's better / intended as it is (something you already benefit from with the envoy system).

That said, there are advantages to the way you do things. You release a lot of content, you keep looking forward, and hope to draw in new people with exciting new innovations. It does work, and a fair bit of what you do is outside the box. Lusternia is an exciting, evolving game which keeps us coming back. With that, however, comes issues: Things outside the box can be spectacular when they work, but occasionally they just don't, and need to be redone.

Before a year's time passes.

Xenthos, I appreciate your observations but I don't really think that it is fair or accurate to characterize that we don't continue working on a project after its released to work out issues. You have a valid point about improving communication but isn't that what this thread is about? We're not going to assign an ephemeral to PR (that's not what ephemerals are for) and I'm not sure having yet another committee would be helpful.

Regarding your specific examples:

Constructs and construct battles - We have continuously been working on this system since it was released (including working closely with a player for ideas). I'm not sure how you can accuse us of letting this go. We're still working on it.

Aetherspace (flying, aetherbubbles, creatures, ship issues) - This too, we have made several large updates since this release and are currently working on it.

Various skillsets (Riding, Dramatics, Crow, etc.) - With the exception of riding (which we've held off on for reasons I don't want to get into), I think the present state of the skillsets are relatively solid (yes, even Crow). However, there's always room for improvement and the hope was for envoys to keep up with necessary adjustments to any issues.

Miniatures (Anyone remember what these are?) - This isn't one of my favorite systems but was designed by someone who thought players would think it's nifty. We actually haven't heard much about what players would want to improve it but it's not really something I think we should spend too much of our resources to develop more.

Ascendance - This is a relatively new release so I'm not sure why you'd include that. However, it is my understanding that some ideas were to increase the combat abilities of ascendants which I don't think is a direction we want to go.

Domoths, rewards - Again, this is also a new release. Anyway, I will just say straight up that I don't believe there's any major issues with the rewards at this time to need a major overhaul. That said, I'm open to tweaking individual domoth awards. In any event, I think this is one of those issues where some individuals believe there is an issue but the admin doesn't.

I think we will go a LONG way if miniatures didn't decay so quickly.

@Xenthos: Lusternia may be 3 years old, but there are still 3 communities that havn't been released yet, so from my point of view, the game will always be in "new development" phase untill they come out So I'd rather see new shiny things that bring about the promises from the history.