To go back on the "delete Glomdoring" point brought it by myself, I'd also like to point out what (probably, to my guess) is what does Glomdoring, monks, and bards have in common?

They were probably rushed to be put in.

They just re-did some of the Bards, and have been re-doing monks, to bad they can't re-do Glomdoring and re-do Viravain, and re-do the Wyrd.

Psh, that was the best configuration I could figure out! So what if Glomdoring lucksacked it!

I like Glomdoring.

Lay off Glomdoring. No, they may not take an active role in major events, but it's not the fault of most of the current Glomdoring players. It's a result of a long, long (since before I was playing) downhill slide despite the efforts of admin and players. Glom simply doesn't have the fighters to compete anymore, so instead of going out and getting walloped over and over, they hide in the forest and refuse to participate. To an outsider looking in, it comes across as a "delete glomdoring, they aren't doing anything" situation, to an insider looking out...they just don't feel like getting beat down constantly. That being said, they really do need to do SOMETHING. Mag extended a hand, and Glomdoring refused to take it.

I will say Glomdoring has a very rich RP environment when there are people around.

Stealth is not even close to a copy of subterfuge.

Lusternia is great to play if you have an hour or more. I dont always have the time to do that, but sometimes I have just half an hour to kill. Perhaps the accessibility for brief play like that can be improved.

The typical start of play is getting all defenses up, several costing lots of power, enchantment charges and herbs. If you have the time to stay on an hour or more, that's okey. But if you're just there briefly, like, want to bash twenty minutes, or have a single spar, that's costly (especially the power) and time consuming. Perhaps you could make Lusternia more friendly for people just dropping in for a short play, or for several short visits on one day. Like, drop or reduce the powercost of permanent defenses (powercost for combat skill has an important balancing role, powercost for defenses just makes you not use your skills if you're online briefly). Or, on logout drop defenses only after 24h. Mages and druids on login already have the moral obligation to meld large stretches of forest or planes for defense, which takes several minutes and adds to the startup (time) cost for getting into a play.

Blacktalon is especially nasty if you dont play a lot: dont log in for five days and risk finding your crow cloak decayed (10 power and a mini quest, 10 months decay I think), your totem unbonded, (10 power, 12 month decay), your nest gone (10 power, 5 wood commodities and a heap of corpses, 4 month decay) and your dark rebirth egg gone (another large heap of corpses, goes along with the nest in 4 months). Just the maintenance of all that is a burden, especially if you have limited amounts of time to log in. Not sure to what extent other classes have this maintenance stacking, so I cannot judge how this influences Lusty as a whole. I feel that these kind of maintenance things add to the issue that Xavius already pointed at: it's all in or all out, there is little middle ground.

Summing up, for future directions, I'd hope to see startup cost/time for getting into a session, and the maintenance time for keeping what you have reduced, so that it's more easy to tag along with Lusternia when you don't have a lot of time in general, or are just in a busy month.

I hate to say it, but if we're going to delete anything, delete Shadowdance Choke.

Choke has been like a crutch for Glom for forever. One that you can't really blame us for using since it is there, and we have it, and everyone else would probably use it just as much if they had it (if not more).

But like all crutches, if you keep using it when you should be testing your legs more, they'll never get stronger again and you won't be able to stand alone.

It won't fix all of Glom's problems, and with Glom's current playerbase being the way it is and the political situation it is in, Glom would definitely suffer IC. But I think it would help significantly in the long run, if only in that we'd spend that much more time in-game playing instead of arguing over it on the forums.

Yeah, I can dream, right?

EDIT: I really like both of Borca and Xavius' posts. They hit close to home.

There's actually just one major issue I have with Lusternia: Roleplay.

Not so much the administrative side than the player side, so I'm not sure what can even be done about it but I wanted to name it anyhow.

To me, Lusternia has lost a lot of its immersion during the last few years. Most player characters appear to be utterly vanilla, most RP I see is WORSE than vanilla - it consists of socials (ie pre defined emotes, no one ever bothers with custom ones) and snuggly sentences. Yay?

The focus of Lusternia seems to be on conflict and fighting, fighting fighting. Yet that also means that issues that may be ooc - like the working of skills etc - are quite frequently discussed. Other conversation topics become unimportant.

Politics are generally straightforward and equally unimportant, as the leadership often does not have the power to enforce much. If they try they will be contested. Maybe this just applies to Serenwilde and Celest, but Celest sure doesn't feel like a "Principality" or even a Kingdom... rather like a huge chaotic mob lead by no one. To pull a real dictatorship or a conspiracy? Forget it. People would just talk about it OOC and lol.

In short, the RP concept for Lusternia is great, but I don't think anyone actually lives it - the only exception would be the divine. They are doing a great job, but as far as the player side is concerened... yeah, well no.

As I said, I'm not sure what to do about it, but my wish would be that player actions can actually -trigger- events and happenings and not for admin to trigger them and for player to tug along. If Magnagora wanted to Taint the Pool, and did that by utterly "owning" Celestia then sitting at the Pool on Celestia and performing some weird ritual.. why should it NOT have consequences? Yet at the same time, people know it won't have any, so they don't even try.

I know it's not easy to do things spontaneously, but I also don't believe it to be impossible. To go with my previous example, changing the desc of the Pool should be easy enough. Putting an RMOTE in that suggests taint equally. For players to think of -any- way to fix it? Well it would be up to them. Alternatively Eventru could do it, but require them offer xyz first because otherwise he won't bother (yes that may not fit with his rp right now, but it was just an example!). Doing it that way wouldn't require much progging at all. The guideline would be to just "roll with it", within a certain frame of course.

Estarra,

I (and a large part of the Lusternian populace) would like to commend you on your fabulous job on the helms of Lusternia. However, we would also like to express our dire need of histories.

Thank you.

You answered your own question: doing that ritual is all PK-driven. Everyone expects PK (or at least taking down guards and smobs) to solve all the problems. If it doesn't they get bothered that they didn't have any ability to stop it (which they probably didn't, because we have an awful lot of players per monitoring admin, and most skills are PK-orientated.)

EDIT: Probably circular reasoning I can't find a good way to explain removed

Shiri, that wasn't in reply to me right? Because I'm not quite sure what you are talking about.

EDIT: To make more clear what I meant though, I can think of -one- such event in Lusternia.

It was during the time Celest first became a Kingdom. We influenced Acknor and won it. Yet they were slavers and we wanted to show them "the light" and make them understand that enslaving furrikin was bad. I didn't actually think it would work - after all it would be a code change and I had never seen such a change due to player RP. Funnily enough, I believe Hajamin coded it after all back then. There was a lot of back and forth in the city about Acknor in the first place, but the fact that he -would- actually change things due to player rp is what I liked.

And that is also what I find is way way too rare. Both the RP and the possibility for it to influence anything at all - even small things.

I'll try and explain it a bit better. This is hard though.



Nothing in this claim is in dispute. There are a few reasons I think it is the case, should be expected to remain the case and probably isn't in the scope of this meeting to fix up (HOWEVER this is where I'd like Estarra's input on the scope she thinks will be involved, because there's "delete choke, fix forging" on one end of the scale, "improve envoys, change commune/city trade dynamic, prioirtise new orgs over new archetypes" in the middle and "make Lusternia more of an RPI with player-driven events and a significantly weakened PK focus" on the other end.)

Reason 1: This is all achieved by PK. If Magnagora wants to Taint the pool, and did that by utterly owning Celestia and sitting on the Pool, it requires it to bust out its overpowered demigod warrior squad, ninjas to support with permawind, a demesne, maybe a bard with maze if they really feel they need it, and etc. etc. Celest has to have insufficient people to disrupt this, not an altogether unlikely scenario. This is all to do with timezones and PK - no amount of RP will change the situation you described. After that, the Pool-tainting squad just does its RP, which I'm quite sure they would enjoy - it would certainly be more enjoyable if a couple players got to take credit for the idea rather than a god, but it doesn't actually matter to most of them all that much.

2. Rather than ask why this should not have consequences, ask why we should be punishing vulnerability to this kind of thing with further "consequences". It's not like we don't have problems with people deliberately sucking the fun out of the game for others as it is - the playerbase isn't filtered for emotional maturity or empathy (with reason!)

3. The following may be unnecessary cynicism or just seeing the bad instead of the good, but: I can't help but imagine players competing to get their RP implemented for exactly this kind of thing to happen and getting upset if it came out imbalanced - goodness knows we already do with things like the Broadcast Centre and the "everyone with Raziela" and "something weird happens to Aestra" events and so on we've had lately.

I wonder if anything from plots has been accepted to date, none of the ideas I've ever heard go in ever came out but they might not have been of any decent quality.

EDIT: This said, I would really like the opportunity for players to change small-scale, comparatively insignificant things more. I'm still sad Talnaras weren't allowed a history. There isn't room in the vision for everything, I guess.

In addition to this, the nature of conflict itself has become more OOC with time. When I started playing, it was easy to feel immersed in the world by conflict - even conflict I didn't want - because it always seemed to have some particular IC basis or reasoning to it. It made the world a lot more fun, exciting, and interesting, and certainly made it easier to forget that I was losing some numeric value associated with my relative strength, because that was just a part of the backdrop. The big exception to this was Wild Nodes.

Then nexus worlds came around. Then the domoths came around. Conflict has gotten progressively more OOC since these came around. They don't have nearly the same rich, intricate connection to the histories and their context in the game world is a lot more vague. I still haven't received a good IC explanation from anyone about what the domoth realms are, how they came to exist, and why there's relatively no danger from constantly trying to harvest loads of power and blessings from them when we know next to nothing about them. If you question it ICly, you will be told ICly that you are silly to ignore all the OOC motivating factors. Forget Project Hope, forget what happened to the first circle of the Elder Gods - go fetch your text bone and make up reasoning later. And when you do, you won't have much time to bother with it, so your reasoning will come out exceptionally "vanilla", as shadow has put it.

How much time is actually spent working towards goals that are backed by clear, solid roleplay significance instead of those that are more strictly mechanical? If we answer that it is comparatively little, it is any wonder that roleplay is in decline?

This is partly due to the content being added, and partly due to how the playerbase is handling it. On the one hand, it would be great if we got more means of conflict that are especially pertinent to the actual game world and not the mechanics behind it. On the other hand, the playerbase could be doing a lot more to infuse more roleplay and game world relevance to the things that seem more strictly mechanical now. We could be writing books theorizing the origins of the domoth realms or where they came from, raising conflicting views between organizations that breed new conflict. We could be doing more to explain how and why the nexus worlds exist. But do we? Well, I haven't seen particularly much of it. And we're all afraid that if we construct something that is not a part of the hidden "vision" that the gods know and work with, then we've wasted our time instead of played up to our roles.

Roleplay is a tough subject to get through.

No, it isn't. PK can't create anything new or lasting. The focus would be on creativity both to cause it and to undo it, and not to repeat a quest you've done 1001 times already for a 1002nd time. (What the raising of the Supernals would be more or less).

It doesn't necessarily have to have any big negative effect either. In my example it would cause an room emote maybe and a changed desc. But guardians could still summon their angels, aquamancers flood etc. It's just be based more on the RP scale. Of course, this would require players to actually "roleplay" too, and as I have mentioned before I don't see anything besides vanilla rp anymore.

Remember how Ayridion tried with his "occurances"? In my opinion, it failed. But not because of him, but because of the players. Once they saw the event wasn't going to change anything, no one bothered or found it interesting. In fact, I don't think anyone except Shamarah ever thought of using emotes to push the event along (as was the case with that weird monk.. or something).




I don't think anything has been. But at the same time, have you ever heard anyone complain about it? Idon't think it's ever been brought up on forums either.

I just wish people would pay a bit more attention to their character and not the next opportunity to kill some random person for some random reason. Also, that game statuse had any meaning at all. Right now getting unenemied is about as easy as getting enemied. People jump back and forth between totally opposing sides with no big consideration - not like it's needed either. The reasons people don't want to come down harder on it... are ooc in nature.


Lusternia is like an rl chatroom with a fantasy sugar coat.

I wasn't talking about the quest specifically, I was talking about the fact that setting up the scenario you were discussing involves basically nothing but the same "skills" which factor into group PK with some "creativity" sugar coating. I get the feeling, though, that I'm just getting hung up on the example you used rather than the principle: can you try another one?

I don't believe occurances failed btw, and we still get the odd low-key mob event that doesn't really bother anyone (had some random mute kid show up in Serenwilde a while ago, she was appreciated even though she hasn't amounted to anything significant - or possibly BECAUSE of that.)

This seems to be a valid fear. I don't think you've been asking the right people about the domotheos though.

Um, perhaps the Acknor one I used before? That had its entirely own issues though, but it was still nice.

As for the mute... I musta missed that.

It wasn't exactly publicised because that would blow it out of proportion and defeat the apparent purpose. Similarly when I started getting random whispering voices in the back of my head I kept it to myself and a few friends until it became apparent that "A Proper Event" was in the works and I should probably let other people get involved (which turned out to be arguable since I'm not Celestian/Glom, but oh well.)

Delete Ialie

Request Granted!

Reason: Your sig is -way- too long!

EDIT: Mod edit to avoid spamming the page: yeah, you should put those blinkies next to Ialie instead of underneath her.

Nexus worlds were the product of player input, and I think they are fantastic and, in time, they will eventually work out for everyone and they will become a great method of conflict (I think they already are, really! The Night Altar went baddaBOOM!). They are, roleplay-wise, the manifestation of the Nexus. They are the proverbial bubble of their existence.

As for Domoth Realms, they do have a story behind them, where they're from, etcetera. You'd need to ask and inquire perhaps with someone who would know, but it's there! I remember drooling all over the keyboard as Estarra was explaining, as per usual...

That said! Player-initiated events. I can think of a few instances (Celest and Acknor, Erion the Faeslayer, the Tainted Fae event), however they are exceedingly difficult to pull together. Events really, really aren't easy! It's not like one can pull one together at the last minute, or on a whim. They take a lot of effort, planning and thought. Hastily done events result in horrible player backlash. The best events are the ones that take time, effort and planning.

Now, of course - personally, if I saw some player doing something that I thought was amazing and could turn into a great event, I might leap at the opportunity! And I am sure there are other administrators that would, as well. I can actually think of a few instances which became missed opportunities, in my eyes.

And the plots board is wonderful! Definitely use it! You may not recognize it, but many of the ideas on there can be taken in part or whole and adapted into something else.

I am sure we'll see many new classes and skills in the future. So perhaps, when thinking of that future, it's good to talk about the pitfalls and opportunities there are combaswise. Here's what I think.

The beauty of lusternia's combat is in responding to your opponent; move and countermove. Please do not allow classes to have a standard balance recovery time of around 2.5 or even 2 seconds. Or classes that swamp you in eight lines of combat and affliction spam every hit. You can't respond to that. Combat becomes fireing at will, a blur on the screen, and responding to attacks has to be automated. .

Speaking about countermoves, some classes have ultimate escape skills and just cant be countered or trapped, that's wrong.

Classes that revolve around preventing your opponent to fight back right from the start of an engagement are also wrong

Loving PvP since open beta, I'm hoping you have a chance to discuss developments and future of combat.

As an aside, I feel that differences in bashing speed between classes should be limited. Try to get consensus over an acceptable difference in xp gain per time? The ease at which Glauco bashed to titan, while earning a quick fortune, is just wrong (other classes I've played bog down at around level 80). This has been mentioned, I'm just adding support from one that's experienced it first hand.