I think the aetherspace design is rather universaily disliked.

Having skill sets that only become really useful when you are in a group, and become a waste when alone, is not a good mechanic. How many active players have chosen an aetherspace specialization? How many of those players picked commander? How many active aetherships are there (active defined as having left a dock in the last month)? How many of those ships have been used as anything more than just a basic troop transport (only requiring a commander) or to sell particles (only requiring a commander and someone with the most basic skill)?

I have never tried to get a full crew together myself but I have seen others try, and I have spoken with Celest's aetherspace "navy" clan about it and the impression I get is that it is almost impossible to do so. No one uses aetherspace for hunting because it is so hard to get everyone together. As a result you are almost always flying your ship solo which means you should be a commander. In fact with the domoth battles now an org is far better served having many tiny ships with lots of commanders able to set flashpoints and fuse.

On top of that having demigods and ascendents with whistles and flashpoints means that very often you do not even fly through aetherspace at all which even further reduces the need for any other specialization.

There are only two times when you need real empath and gunners, hunting in aetherspace and weakenings. As weakenings happen only during set times it becomes very hard to plan around them and get a full crew ready. If you are able to do so you will be almost assured of having little to no opposing aetherships on defense. Thus you end up really doing everything on the ground. This is assuming you can convince your org to even bother with an attack due to the extreme difficulty of dropping a construct.

As far as hunting for xp in aetherspace is concerned I have never tried it. My limited experience in small ships leads me to believe that you would require a very large ship with a full crew to make it safe. This means you have four people required, the creatures would need to be worth a ton of exp to make it worthwhile. The main benefit is having the ability to take a low level person along for semi-safe exp gain. This can be done far easier by a two man team doing normal PvE though. Does anyone here have any experiance with serious aetherspace leveling attempts?

I am not sure if I would like to see all of the above addressed before new things are added, but I do know that aetherspace is one of the unique things that Lusternia has going for it and I think a lot could be done to make it more generally useful to everyone, more accessible , and more a part of the general gameplay experiance of the average player.

I'd be happy if the nerf stick wasn't used each time to 'fix' something. Bards make me cry. Kharaen went from being on par with a geomancer to being slower then a human warrior, doing less damage then a druid (as a faeling shadowsinger bard), and being hit for amounts that I accept as normal and others are simply shocked to hear about. I shudder to think of people with unbonded instruments (bards are lowest on topguilds for a reason!) go through.

When fixing things, keep the nerf stick as an option when no other possibility is feasible or available.

Not to get off topic, but Druids do some nasty damage if you're smart.

But like... it is just a few voices. I can name them all. And that's great! Your opinions count just as much as the rest of us, but please don't forget that a bulk of Lusternia's playerbase isn't 100% concerned with combat. A lot of people bash, a lot of people socialize, and a lot of people make tradeskill empires. Save for the random times when people help the big fighters defend, they never really bother with combat. That's plainly evident in Glomdoring alone, and our playerbase isn't as big as some of the other nations. Personally, it's why I chose Glamours over Ecology- not because it's a better combat skill, but because it's more versatile for me to roleplay with.

I'm happy that Estarra wants to keep adding things to the lush roleplay environment we have. It shows that we have a creator in Lusternia that cares about the other side of MUDding when some of the others (read: most of) I've seen segment their focus toward what the fighters are doing. I'm not advocating the exclusion of bringing skill fixes to her attention, but I am against targeting additions to the gameplay.

I'm going to bring up my one arm breaking bug that I keep bugging and it keeps not getting fixed.

When I'm hunting aslarans, or any other mob that breaks limbs (I can't reember if its right or or left arm now) I will never receive a message telling me that my left arm breaks, and when I swing my weapons, I don't get the message that the arm is broken. However, I DO get these messages for my right arm. (I may have the arms switched, but you get the idea)

Its possible that just my charachter is broken, but I've bugged it twice and its still broke.

Heh, I was going to comment (before I actually read the thread) that a lack of focus and the diversity of Lusternia is one of it's biggest draws to me.

We don't have a cracked elbow in the bug queue so either it was deemed not a bug or was too vague to address. If it's "obviously bugged" then you should re-bug it and be extremely clear.

If there are a lot of harmony chants that don't work as specified, then I am completely open to a special report if the envoys think its needed.

Combat styles have been discussed since Geb brought up some points a few weeks ago. We're still not certain how or if this will be addressed but it's on the table.

If there are "a LOT of these things", then we don't know about them. As stated, we have very few reported, valid bugs at this time.

Lots of class imbalances, mainly wiccans/guardians.

Blackout is an issue. It can be stacked and whored like no tomorrow.

Alot of what Nejii said.

coughwarriorstoocough

The Avenger adressing Estarra should have a small council of people who don't abuse avenger/hide behind avenger all the time, to sit back and go over it in detail with you. But from what I notice about avenger:

It can be bypassed pretty easily, through all different tricks and means. From defending a defenders defender to scrying a psymet monk who has status on you. I think you should have a sit down with a group of people somewhere and devulge how the mechanics of avenger work. This way they can possibly help propose a better way to make avenger feasable and useful for those who actually need avenger's protection, and limited to those who use it like grace to hide behind, or work ways around it to make sure they cause people to pray while never ending up with vengeance.


I also have to agree with what Fain said, while I and some others have a problem with how statues/totems are tuneable to orders, that does not mean they are broken or buggy. They are working how they were coded. So like almost everything else people have stated here it does not mean they need to be fixed in anyway, it just means some people don't like how some things are and would like to see changes.

Now sorting out what is worthy of looking into and what isn't is the problem. If someone doesn't feel fast enough against contorters, does that mean something is wrong with the actual game? Probably not. But if it became apparant that nothing could stop a contorter and they were out of things in 1 sec that everyone else took 5 sec to get out of, that may be something that would/should be listed (but as of now this is not the case)

I think the Envoy system should be restructured with a focus on an administration driven process than a player driven process. Specifically, I would like to see the administration identify problems areas (which could be done with the assistance of Envoys, but the decision would be administratively decided); ask the Envoys to focus on tweaking these problem areas; and then the administration making a final decision. Often, I think many Envoys focus exclusively on a very narrow range of skillsets. I don’t place any blame on the Envoys because I feel they are trying to do the best for the greater good.

However, Lusternia markets all skillsets equally, which I feel is extremely misleading. Over the years, some skillsets have been practically forgotten and received no Envoy love (or very minimal love). I recently encountered someone who was very upset because she read about a skillset on the website, loved the idea of it, learned it to transcendence and unfortunately found out that it was just not going to work well in combat. She didn’t have the credits to switch to a better option (Runes->Psionics)... and she felt very mislead.

~

A Detailed Example:

It is widely accepted that mages with Runes (and Dreamweaving) are operating very sub par to mages with Psionics in terms of offense, defense, and utility. If we compare Telepathy vs. Runes, we find that Telepathy actually has better afflictions (Telepathy really only misses out on garbage afflictions like Lethary and Weakness and gains stuff like Addiction); afflicts faster over time; damage/drains ego at the same time it afflicts; and has a wider range of kill options available. Psionics/Telepathy have useful abilities for utility/roleplay (biofeedback, ironwill, psibar, psiarmour, hive mind, etc). The same can be said for Telekinesis. Runes doesn’t have anything like this at all.

~

Here are problem areas (in terms of skillsets) that I see:

Healing (Aurawarp and Bedevil might be nice in combat if they weren’t so easy to cure. You move a room away from the caster, who largely has no means to hinder your movement, and eat a herb to botch a 2p and 4p curse)

Ecology (Why are poisons so limited? Why isn’t something like Mantakaya available through stinger fetish? Dulak through fang fetish? The vast majority of available poisons just don’t mesh well with the Druids or Commune Bards)

Runes (Specialize it like Illusions! There is no quick fix to Runes because there isn’t a whole lot you can do for Mages that wouldn’t be overpowered for Druids much like Illusions was neat for Mages but junk for Bards before Glamours/Phantasms)

Dreamweaving (Specialize it like Illusions! Similar problem as Runes!)

Astrology (How about some new skills in the skillset that create a pretty chart that is easy to read that spells everything you can do at the moment out for you. I dislike skillsets that require a coded system just to know what the heck you can do with it)

Tracking (I think this skillset could use something to make it more appealing. It’s basically a skillset where you get to use 2 skills at any one time: a hound/wolf and potentially a trap. Maybe it could gain things that make it really good at... tracking stuff? wilderness stuff (like catching animals and cooking them in your campfire for free food)? the ability to blend into the surrounding to fool even a thirdeye (you could still be hit by everything and scried, you just aren’t seen when people look into the room), physical dmp, etc)?

Hexes for Nihilists (Pretty junky. I realize people can paint some neat theoretical applications under the best circumstances, but I have this gut feeling that it’s still worse off than Tarot).

~

@Fain

Replace “fixes” with “improvements,” and we’ll be on the same page!

That's exactly the kind of comment that drives us nuts. What class imbalances and why mainly wiccans/guardians? I don't see it so please be specific!




If there is an issue, that certainly can be easily fixed (though a bit vague of how it can be stacked/whored). But is that really the only specific imbalance you see that needs addressing? I know there must be more!

Amen! Not to negatively target other realms (coughaetoliacough), but I'm so thankful for Estarra's method of conflict in Lusternia. The adversity is more realistic this way. I didn't like having to pick one side or the other ("Good" or "Bad"), making Glomdoring's atmosphere perfect. And that's just one facet! The Caoimhe Dell conflict was great, because it was open-ended enough to force technically "neutral" groups to work together. Anywhere else, that would be virtually impossible because of how defined their intended focus for the realm is.

Please, please don't rigidly define the focus of Lusternia. Open is better!

I hope this wasn't a long rebuttal of my tedious broken/not-broken point, because I agree with you: aetherspace definitely needs some tweaking, and it's great shame it's not used more. To some extent, I think it will get increasingly popular as more bubbles are found, and I also think that good nexus world and construct tweaks may increase the frequency of full on aetherbattles, but if you have any other ideas (aside from those you've already mentioned) post away.

Okay, if you really going to be so unhelpful and vague, please don't post on this thread.

Aetherspace at the moment is more on the page of 'remove, rethink, redo' at the moment, I believe. It has no genuine usage to the populace cept maybe a handful and even that handful, it's only useful for 3 days out of the week.
Edit: Aetherholds just don't hold enough to have fun anymore. We're talking in a few minutes you fill up and the price is just so substantial to make them. The reward is pretty nifty but it takes a large crew to acomplish as well.

I will post on it but I believe the following would resolve some of the issues:
-Bard report for caco and spiritsingers to change focus (9 slots per guild MAYBE 4 major and 5 minor, minor being like up DMP or range of DMP, major being something like redoing an effect entirely. That should allow them to change focus).
-Tertiary report (Guilds who cant use any tertiary).

Thats all for now, class startin again

I don't agree. I don't think as it stands it's unviable at all, I just don't think there's sufficient incentive to persuade people to play with it.

Geb's CElbow bug was that it is supposed to stop, hinder, or otherwise do something to parry/stance, of which it doesn't do any of the above. You still parry 100% of the time with the affliction, you can change parry, and it didn't affect stance at all (although we didn't think it would, since it's an arm affliction).

These things were just examples of skillset "quirks", I said there are probably various other ones out there because I've been several archetypes, and they all have had skills which are written off as "not working" or just plain ol' bugged.

Correct, view edit.