That's the problem with pulling a quote out of context from the middle of a conversation that spans multiple posts. You need to read the flow of the thread and the conversation I was responding to.

Well anyway, I'd like to see things shifted around(Visibly!) so mid-range characters would be at least theoretically capable of excelling in combat, with higher skill levels offering benefits instead of vital skills.

Examples: Get rid of the idea of higher Discipline speeding up Focusbody, it should only work at the current speed enjoyed by Trans Discipline. Bring skills like Tumble down very low. Add skills to Magic(I really liked the ideas for this offered earlier!), so on and so forth. Of course, if you did this then most affected skillsets would need a skill or two added at or near Trans to boost desirability.

Can anyone summarize some of this?

1. What is the state of lusternia? is it growing, stagnant, shrinking?

Actually, compare to the other IRE games.. achea, aetolia, imperian.. where are we relative to them when they were at our age? If we are significantly below in growth, maybe something is wrong..

2. so the three biggest problem in lusternia, and if this were solved everyone will be happy is:
2.1. high cost of starting up
2.2. forging
2.3. glomdoring/choke/bard/monks

Anyway:

My request -- we need more accessable bashing places (mid and high). Astral/muud/aetherways/bubbles does not cut it.. either the sphere is locked/neurotic.. cant go out of muud quickly if there are OOC emergencies.. no aether crew present.. etc..) -- There is only UV and prime(read that as gorgogs.. the others I try to leave for newbs..) - there is a reason why the prison is being cleared lately..

My idea is to actually add another layer to UV.. Like underdark.. or just a layer on the undersea of keph and populate it with krakens and adoraths.. yarrr.. "Abandon hope all ye who enter there"

but this request, and all such requests.. i dunno, are they really the thing to bring to such a meeting. That meeting is not a "what skill/wish/hope you want meet".. people can go "not on agenda, next.."..

Well just in case post more people.. and lets see, maybe some ideas will shine through.. a broken clock is right twice in a day and all that..

If they open builders again, I'd love to build something like that. Long time since I made an IRE area

Mortal Builder applications, to my knowledge, are currently open, Moiraine.

So uh...we'll just forget I'm a dummy. Also, Moiraine in-game is a totally different person, and the dog ate my homework, and stuff.

/derail

Edit: Kudos for the way Lusternia seems to run building, according to HELP MORTALBUILDERS. I like!

I definitely don't disagree that the cost for combat here is rather high, and I feel it could be made easier in many of the ways mentioned. My concern, of course, is that my numerous skills and artifacts will be devalued by some of these "fixes" to the game. Sure, I didn't pay money for any of it, but I don't feel these things make me so grossly overpowered, either.

I'm all for changes such as scaling the resistances or other benefits (faster power regeneration, faster focus body times) so they reach their maximums at Master. Adding abilities to many of these skills would be a very welcome thing, too!

Good post Shadow.



I think what we can get away from this thread so far is that players are still passionate about Lusternia. Because we make the effort to argue, raise our points and concerns. And the presence of passion must be a positive sign to the state of things, isn't it? 4 years now I think, and Lusternia still has so much potential and promise.

I think the beauty of Lusternia must be on roleplay. Players shouldn't depend as much on the Divines to initiate roleplay (The Divines know how much the Divines have on their shoulders already *chuckle*) but players should be encouraged more to do more roleplay with each other. Encouragement need not be in the form of credit rewards and such. Simple acknowledgement and recognition is in itself rewarding. Maybe a sort of 'scroll of the fates'? - where in it is listed noted characters, a brief description of them and how they have contributed to roleplay.

Also players (me included *chuckle*) should be encouraged to write their background and histories more; to be read and appreciated by other players. You need not invest lots of credits to enrich your character. By investing on your character's story you will no doubt leave with a rich experience. By enriching our characters' story, we would only be enriching the story of Lusternia.

Lusternia is never been about the flash and splendour of graphics and sound. Lusternia is however a world of words and imagination. Storytelling and roleplay is the key.

Finally to Team Lusternia, I am, no doubt, not alone when I write this; We players appreciate all your efforts. Water flow from top to bottom. Passion can only be brought forth when it is there to begin with.

Well first of all I'd liked to say that it's nice that IRE is looking into problems within the game. I do enjoy playing MUDs more than anything else, I thought about inquiring if I could join in the meeting but then thought I've come out of inactivity from Lusternia just recently and my input is probably not as well thought out as I would like it to be. I'm still very biased towards other muds at the moment.

But having played other MUDs while I was gone from Lusternia maybe I could do a comparison here.

First of all, for a very brief time, I actually played a starwars mud... rise of the sith or something like that. It was a crap mud to be honest, but about thirty of us from another mud went to play it anyway (mainly because the mud I was playing at that time had a major server problem and was out for a couple of weeks). Some of us powergamed, some of us tried to RP, some of us tried our hand in combat (which was amusing really, how can you not like shooting lasers at each other and fighting with light sabers?) It was perma death after a certain point but character development was very easy and fast. All in all it was fun, but after that short time we all pretty much got sick of it due to lack of depth and mystery. Once you've figured everything out what else is there? That's one of the problems I had with Lusternia. When I quit back then I was pretty much getting sick of everything. It was the same thing day in day out, I knew about all the skills that I could know about, I had one of the highest exploring ranks in the game, I couldn't be bothered to go through the gruesome trial of bashing, I knew how to do every single quest out there, combat became a bore as it was fighting the same people day in day out. I literally came to a point where I could say there was nothing more I could do to spark any interest. Of course now there are a lot of things I can do as a lot of things have changed, but eventually I will reach that point and yes I will quit again.

That being said, what holds me down to a game is the mystery behind it. When you don't know something it becomes more exciting, in a sense it's an adventure rather than a boring monotonous task. I think Lusternia started off great like that, it was different and it had a good history which in effect hooked a lot of players. But eventually it becomes stale mostly because people find out about every single thing they could possibly know. So what's the solution to that? Well introducing things like skill sets is always an exciting event, sure. You'll have people getting all giddy switching guilds, buying credits just to see what it's like but then it's more like a fad than anything else. The hype will die down and everything goes back to normal. Same thing with introducing new areas, new quests, or what not in IRE format. It's pretty much a short term solution to a bigger problem which I suppose I would call "World Depth". People need to think that there is always more that they can do and find out. With a MUD that can be limitless as text can carry out more depth than any graphical game can do. How do you create more depth in a game though?

Well I'm inclined to think that it involves a slew of many different things. For one the world needs to have it's secrets. Some of you might think it's not viable. Every single secret usually leeks out, especially in IRE where IC knowledge is pretty much an OOC forum conversation but I've seen it done rather well in many games. I'll bring out Armageddon as an example as I played it the most while I was gone. One thing that has hooked people there for more than 10 years is that people actually don't know everything there is to know about that game. You can have a veteran talk to a newbie and the veteran actually go wow? You serious that actually happened? Or that :censor: is real? Now how do they manage this?

From my obervation:
Discovery is player driven and not a necessity. There's no real need for an event to happen which introduces areas nor does it have to be known to all for everyone to enjoy. I believe the idea of something might be out there adds a lot more to a game as opposed to letting the entire playerbase know that there is a new area open.

Creation/code is created based on player actions. It's much more rewarding for players when the world is molded based on character actions as opposed to just random events. Lets say for example Kethuru breaking free the first time around, if that was actually brought about by a player as opposed to it just being a "Oh! We have an event!" I think that would be much cooler for everybody involved plus it adds to player history.

Very well documented history. Maybe Lusternia has this but I'm inclined to not think so. History is not just general history, every single part of the game needs a history. The guilds, the areas, the npcs, history that can go as deep as that one weird rock in the glomdoring chasm. And it needs to be dynamic and documented to accommodate the dynamic nature, which in turn keeps the history relevant and ever growing. I'll give an example of a disappointing interaction I had in Lusternia. Captain Avarath has interacted with my character on several occasions. Don't get me wrong I love it when imms interact through npcs, but the personality of Captain Avarath has also changed every single time I've spoken to him. Why is that? He should have logs on how he acts towards certain people, how he acts in general, things that he remembers things that he knows. Also he needs a history that people can find out. At the moment how many of the people know about their guild tutors? Where they came from, who they really are. To many they're not actually a character ig, more like a piece of code that generates lessons. But can you really blame people for the view when so little has been done to develop such characters? Villages, npcs, entire areas need to have a atmosphere to it, something that people can immerse themselves into, things that they can learn.

World interaction needs to be less coded and more reactive. True the only way to do this is through hardwork by the admin but, the more coded a place is the more chunky it feels and the more it will be treated like code. In a sense when you rely on code too much then what separates you from a graphical game? MUDs have the ability to be make a scenario dynamic as you can create an entire scene without the restriction of code, there needs to be more emphasis on that strength. This boils down to non coded quests, npc interaction, random events all overseed by admin. The players are able to do these by themselves but they are always limited by the restrictions imposed on them. The added flare of something happening that they cannot possibly do themselves make people wonder what else can happen and adds a lot of interest.

This is terribly long as is and I should stop but when I feel up to it, you all have the displeasure of seeing another long post probably about how we need a think, feel command and biography database so admins can follow our character development, etc, etc.

For other points.

As for envoys - My main complaint is, it is too combat oriented. Skill sets that are geared towards combat are all fine and dandy but I think most envoys forget that skill sets are not just about combat. These sets are supposed to be fun, and to make a skillset fun it not only needs to be balanced combat wise but it has to have a lot of flavour to it, be it utility, rp, aesthetic, interactivity or what not.

As for other things that people have mentioned, skills, certain quests or minigames in the game. Guys really... by now you should all know that while these things need discussion these things will never make any of you happy as attempting to reach balance is practically an impossible task. I like IRE combat and one day I will get back into it, I swear... but maybe you guys should take a step back and stop thinking about it when it comes to problems that lusternia has. You can balance the skills all you want but you will never balance player density nor player skill, and unless you take those random factors out you will never balance Lusternian combat. Hey someone has to win! Also many of you need to admit that it's not imbalance, you guys just suck... sorry! game over man.

Oh, I'd like to add that to make a really good game depends much on the players as much as admin.

Given fact: Admin cannot do everything and players probably play the biggest role into making a world come alive.
Ineffect: This game is as much yours as it is theirs, need to treat it like your kid as well.

You can't choose who you are going to fight half the time. Vathael will jump you in the Prison just as Thoros and Shikha will gank you on astral. If you have a cubix, or run, they come to raid Celestia to continue pestering you, calling you expletives because you don't want to fight them (because you know you can't stand up to them), when you did not instigate the fight to begin with.

I wrote more, but it

That was the most cogent wall of text I think I've seen on the forums full stop.

EDIT: Most of all those things I agree with the fact that envoys are too combat-orientated though. In fact a lot of Lusternia is. I'm starting to understand why Elryn kept posting skillsets full of gardening and crap.

Wow Alger, that was a lot of stuff!

I kinda agree with some of it, but only in theory. What I mean is, I've never, ever felt bored by any aspect of Lusternia so I don't have any complaints there. BUT if others are, I can see how your suggestions would improve things for them. And in general just be cool. I particularly like the idea of the admin ninja-adding areas. BUT I like releases that are tied to events, so I'd hope that not every area added would be ninja-added!

I think that part of the reason that not every rock or NPC or what have you has a thirty page history written is that it leaves room for the characters to 'discover' said history and write about it themselves.

And ick on the think commands. I tried a game recently that had think commands. Every five minutes this little 'hint' would pop up reminding me to use the think command to give my character depth. But I couldn't think of anything to 'think' about. In their forums everyone's all "I use think while I'm waiting for so and so to respond to what I've said/done to think about what my character will say next or how they feel about the conversation so far" but my brain doesn't work that way. When my character is in a conversation with someone, I don't wanna be in the middle of typing a stupid 'think' when it's my turn to reply. I wanna reply. I tried to think up deep and meaningful 'thinks' for my character and wound up with, "Gee this manure pile really smells bad, I hope I don't have to touch it." I felt put on the spot and I felt retarded - it certainly didn't improve my enjoyment of the game.

Yeah... I do totally agree that there needs to be more things that absolutely nothing to do with combat in any way shape or form to do.

Okay, all of it, but mostly, this.

I can't even describe how peeved off I was that Saint Tresalyne - an ICON to the Celestines since literally the very start of Lusternia, was brought back... and we didn't even get to talk to him. No interactions. No questions answered. Nothing. We got some fancy world emotes and a merian saying she was a descendant of the first guildmaster of the Celestines, which is cool (and I am still waiting for some awesome interaction with her, Eventru ), but at the same time we were like, 'Since when?' Only recently (like, two days ago), I learned that Javile was the 'first' Celestine GM - and I went: who is Javile?

I just felt like my roleplay was sort of stretched and skewed - I'm the guildmaster and I know pretty much zip about anything that happened before the year 170ish.

Aison has tried since she was 20 years old to dig up any meaningful amount of Celestine history that isn't along the lines of, 'Such and such became a GM, such and such stepped down as Champion, so and so has left the guild' etc., and I gave up on it a rl year. Admittedly this was mostly because of laziness, but also because I felt hopeless and like I had nowhere to start. I didn't know if I was supposed to write a story and send it to Estarra, or e-mail her and ask permission, or seek out guidance. It's still one of my dreams to write the Celestine history, though. I hope that, especially with Eventru around and his (obvious) interest in the Celestines, some history will emerge that still has room for players to write.

edit: oh, and as a last thought... it would be nice to know some of the history of guild tutors. Edathic and Torili stand in our GH all day (or did when we had one ). It'd be nice to know how or why they are there. Even a boring story like, 'Oh, my father was a teacher for the loboshi monks on Tosha and I just felt so compelled!' would be sufficient.

I just noticed people talking about removing the scaling of things such as focus body in regards to discipline and others skills/effects that are similar and personally if these effects were all changed/removed id want my credits/money back..i got those skills like many other people for those specific reasons and wouldn't want them otherwise, similarly if moiraine's idea about moving the abilities around in skillsets to make it easier for lower people to fight better id also want my credits/money back as why would i ever have bothered to trans any of the skills that i have?

Though i would never expect the admin to change skills like this..i hope? :S


Also i disagree with you krin as skill > omnitrans..so having arties and omnitrans doesnt mean that someone 50% or even 10% of your might can't or won't be able to kill you, its just that alot of the omnitrans arti people that you find in lusternia have a lot of skill on top of what they've paid for...

The one class you really -need- transcendent Combat + Resilience against is Warriors. That is, for Krin's argument of always seeking out opponents with similar mights, a tritrans Warrior against a tritrans anything else will crush that tritrans anything else if both have only their guild skills transcended. Making Combat affect parrying/stancing success less would be an awesome change (same with Discipline and focusbody).

completely disagree with the above, i learnt combat and resilience for the first time last week with a character that has taken down omnitrans arti warriors without any of that..its all down to how you fight hinder etc...

Yes, we should all be shadowdancers using choke and passive mana drains, that's a good comparison. For the rest of the mud who can't depend on a skill that was balanced elsewhere by the equivalent of both hexes and fae (vibes) dying in a retard vibe set too early while using passive mana drains for toad, not so much. As Choke is slated for a change, I imagine this little mention will disappear.

I put a bet on you responding like that X). And its also possible as other classes and has been done my many people at different times..though all those people i guess have utilised another tactic that you would label as cheap

Edit: Also the mana drain? i damage killed!