That's one of the reasons why people get so annoyed about raids. They're being attacked where they are the most safe from attacks from other players. Unless they actually enjoy PvP, this becomes a major distraction from your preferred activity. Personally, I find demesne watch the most annoying thing in the world, especially when someone seems to know where my demesne is and is stepping in and out on purpose.

I read most of the first page, skimmed the rest. But I wanted to comment on Moiraine's comment from earlier:

I felt like I really started getting involved in this whole vicious pvp cycle when I started hunting illithoids. A number of times, I was hunting pretty peacefully, calmly pressing my bashing macros, when a bunch (always a bunch) of mags would drop in on me and kill me. At first, I was pretty angry, but then I thought "Well, they're justified RP-wise, plus I'm in enemy territory, so in a way, it's kinda my fault". So after a few times this happened, I decided that I would stop hunting illithoids, even though they're good experience, simply because I just didn't want to die anymore, or be an easy pvp target (especially since the attackers would feel no consequence at all upon my death, notably not from avenger)

But another incident occurred during this whole process. I was hunting in the tunnels, where I'm protected by avenger, when I was attacked by one zealous magnagoran who was trying to carry out a one-person crusade against those "dirty kephera". I got away, but was again pretty annoyed, as the tunnels were supposed to be my safe hunting spot. But again, I rationalized for him: he's a mag, they're against kephera, so yea, he's justified rp-wise to try to kill me, I guess. He's even willing to take the consequences of avenger for it, so I guess it's ok.

And so eventually that was the end of my bashing days. No more illithoids, because of enemy territory. I was never much of an astral hunter either, as I wasn't competent enough to jump around to good spheres. And then when the gorgogs/merian isle areas became official, I didn't even think about gorgogs either, as that would just give any passing mag another excuse to try to kill me. And as much as I have a system, I still go down pretty easily to anybody who wants to take a whack at me.

Then today, I was hunting on astral, first time in a long time. I was pretty happily going along, noting with glee the number of lobstrosities, when I was attacked by two prominent Mag fighters. And you know what my first reaction upon death was (death coming very quickly after they started attacking me)? It was "Oh, I was defending Celestia yesterday, so I guess they're justified in coming after me".

And now, after reading these posts, I'm thinking "wtf?" I was DEFENDING celestia, territory of my organization, and didn't even manage to kill them. Today, I'm minding my own business, and I get attacked and killed in a zone with absolutely no repercussions to the attackers? And it isn't even a matter of trying to fight back, because not only was I in the middle of a kata combo, but I died in around 4 double-hits. I literally had about 1 second to react before I died.

Is this kind of playing justified, do you guys think? Because honestly now, with all the enemy territory and planar rules of Avenger, there's really only a few "safe" places left for me to hunt, and frankly, this fact really angers me. I sincerely wish that, in this respect, Lusternia was more like Imperian, where there are ~5 areas for each org devoted almost solely to bashing. No history, no fancy quests. Just critters for bashing.

By this point, those select few Magnagorans traveling in packs are really beginning to annoy me. I try not to antagonize them by joining raids. They know I'm not a big pvp fighter. And yet they still go after me.

As for raids, they can be fun up to a point. I remember another time when mags were raiding celestia, and I had a slightly amusing chat with Shaddus. Granted, we were holed up at the pool, but that small bit of interaction with him actually made the whole thing more fun. But usually, if it's just go up, die, def up, go up, die again, defending against the raid really loses its fun quickly.

Maybe this is just an indirect whine about my lack of fighting. But at the very least, I'm quickly finding that all the "forced" or indirectly-forced pvp is drastically decreasing the amount of fun I have, and the time I spend online.

This is kind of what I was trying to get at earlier when I said PK "solves" other kinds of conflict. In Lusternia there are ostensibly limits on this kind of thing, but in practice they don't actually work, since Avenger never protects you and karma curses are worthless even if he did, meaning people feel powerless and have no recourse to action. About the best they can hope for is their org's top combatants going to chase them down...but there are midbiekillers smart enough to just spore out whenever an actual threat shows up, and even a couple good enough to actually deal with other top combatants beating on them. So there is nothing anyone can do but harrass the entire other org they belong to, which offends all the wrong people. But since they can't do anything about the individual you can see where that mindset might come from.

To me, the fact that you can force PvP onto other people means that Lusternia is a PvP game. You can do other things, that's great, but sooner or later you will have to deal with the core aspect of the game - PvP.

This sounds way too defeatist to me. It's definitely theoretically possible for the game not to degenerate into this.

I agree with you partially on this. However, the ability to force PvP on others is limited by systems already in place. The primary means of this is the Avenger system, which would prevent you from dying more than once to the same person if PK is not your goal. As a secondary system, something that players don't regularly think about, we have the player community. If your entire PK operation centers around destroying the defenseless and destitute, you are in for destruction at the hands of the player community.

I do not personally think that Lusternia having a lot of PvP is a problem. If you are a noncombatant, there are plenty of ways for you to avoid PvP when necessary (or at least survive short-term defense). A number of our players have generously made quality free systems available to the masses, and the player community as a whole is willing to help people build their own systems and get trigger lines if they so choose. That said, it does become a problem if someone is constantly beating down on another. I've been active in several IRE games, and I've never found this to be fun.

The avenger doesn't work.
And the player community doesn't work either, as Lendren already observed - when someone like Thoros starts jumping small people what are we supposed to do? Gank him? Right. Gank his citymates? Like he cares! If he's around he'll just join in. The playerbase doesn't have the options to deter this kind of behaviour.

A lot of PvP is one thing, a lot of PvP forced on people who can't do anything about it is quite another.

As far as I'm aware, it's been working exactly as it's intended. There are no bugs in the queue regarding Avenger.


I disagree. If a combatant continues to "pick on the little guy", can you not publicly call him out on it? Can you not organize groups to hunt him whenever he leaves his city until he agrees to stop?

Charune, there's an entire tread dedicated to how borked Avenger is. Shiribot, I choose you!

He won't leave, he won't agree to stop. And you can publicly call him out, sure, but he'll probably shout something along the lines of 'NO U', go to his manse and QQ to do it again another day. There's some people you just can't get to.

That's because "as intended" doesn't do what it's intended to do. If it's supposed to prevent excessive PK, it doesn't do that, because there's a giant out clause available to the excessive PKers. There aren't any bugs reported because this is a design issue, not a bug.

No? I mean, you can do that, it just won't work. If anything he'll just take it for granted that everyone involved is willing and gank them individually (again, with nonfunctional avenger) until most of the people involved just give up. And that's for the latter, as for "calling him out publically" - I can't even see what that's SUPPOSED to do, much less what it would do.

There's an entire thread dedicated to help us pinpoint any "bugs" with the Avenger and address any concerns. Currently, there are no bugs and, as far as I'm concerned, it is not "borked". Again and again, we ask if there are bugs to let us know exactly how to duplicate the bug so that we may fix it. I think we've been pretty diligent in addressing Avenger bugs/issues as they come up.

So what would you have the Avenger do to better protect the prime? (Note we really want the off-prime planes to be free from PK restrictions.)

You have indeed been diligent with the bugs and I am glad for that, because we hate when it spazzes and get suspect for the wrong reason.

What hasn't been addressed, and in fact came out -worse- the last time it was brought up, is that people can and do ignore Avenger by just attacking people when they're bashing, because a lot of the game's bashing - especially the good parts - are offplane or enemy you.

I understand that you want these places to be dangerous, but this goal has ended up opposed to wanting Avenger to stop excessive PK. But the last time this was brought up, the response was to make the gorgogs enemy you as well. (I know this was because of a related complaint in that some quests were favouring the harrasser in Avenger terms, instead of the harrass-ees trying to fix it.)

There's the enemy territory thing, for starters. If someone that has suspect on you attacks you inside an area you're an enemy of, the suspect doesn't drop. They can wail on you and you can't do a single thing in return except heal yourself and leave. IMO, that should never happen. You should always be entitled to self defense. If they don't want anything to happen to them, they shouldn't be trying to attack you while they've got suspect to protect them.

Various ideas that came up were having to go out of your way to maintain some kind of status that allowed you to protect a designated area, rather than just having it be the case that if I wander across Anon the newbie bashing gorgogs, I can take him out and he has no access to recourse. Other ideas were to make bashing not a problem but make doing the conflict quests (i.e release gorgogs) enemy, which sacrifices the ability of, say, Celestians to protect merians in exchange for letting people bash gorgogs without people "protecting" them for no reason. The tradeoff is worth it. There may be other options I simply forgot about too.

As for offplane, it would help if places like Astral, the catacombs, and aetherbubbles had not been placed offplane precisely for this reason (free-PK bashing, and there not even being anything to fight over like on Nil or something) but I think we're going to end up agreeing to disagree there and I have no idea what you would do about it since...they're offplane! Actually, I guess aetherbubbles could be Avenger-protected and then make them open-PK during domoths...eh.

EDIT: Alianna brings up a related point - people CAN'T defend themselves in enemy territory even if they're actually able to fight. I'm much more concerned about the people who would normally not be able to beat their attacker though.

In regard to bashing in areas that have enemy statuses attached, I personally do not see an issue. There are bashing areas that exist without the enemy status where it is much more difficult to be jumped, due to avenger restriction. These areas are naturally more highly contested because it's easier to bash there safely. For more reward, you may need to delve into areas that are defended by a particular organization (merians, Shallach for example). With increased reward comes increased risk. This is not unique to Lusternia.

So essentially, some of you desire the Avenger to protect you everywhere you may desire to pursue some activities? If that is the case, I am strongly opposed to that idea.

For one thing, excessive PK can be avoided by not bashing in aligned areas and on unprotected planes. Heck, there is a somewhat viable alternative to bashing that can bring in good gold without causing a person to be branded an enemy to non-org areas it is done in. Though bashing is arguably the fastest means of gaining levels, being able to bash for Titan/Demigod quickly in high experience yielding areas should lack Avenger protection in my opinion. The risk should be equal with the reward, which the chance of dying to a mob bashing in those high experience yielding areas does not cover.

You think hunting the Griefers does anything but make them grief more? No. It does not.

Most of the time it turns into ultimatums. One side demands joe to stop doing whatever before they'll make Andy stop doing whatever, and neither side is willing to admit they are defending griefers. Or, in a lot of cases, they like watching their Griefer hack apart the enemy because the enemy made them mad OOC or something.

I know the Admin want help with the Avenger, but my experience is that...you don't really care. Maybe not YOU personally, but...as I said earlier, I've issued about the Avenger and avenger avoidance and I've been blown off with "The avenger didn't catch it, oh well" type responses.

Please believe me when I say we care about each and every issue raised by the playerbase. We are constantly brainstorming new things to help players and always working on fixing reported bugs and imbalances.

If you feel an issue or bug was not handled correctly, please email support@lusternia.com. Player concerns are taken very seriously.