Oh gosh Aison, I really wish you'd taken the time to think before you posted that.

First and foremost...survival is not subterfuge, so I'm not sure what you are trying to prove there.

Ghostwalk is not anything like Ghost in Achaea. In achaea it hides your name, and you are just a "ghostly figure" moving around. People still see you.

Sneak is just like any other invisibility skill. Yesod, cloak, camoflage.

Rooftop has no equivelent. (Climbing for trees is in acrobatics and environment, if that's what you were trying to get at. Rooftops is exclusively Lusternian)

Yank is in Ninjakari

Veil of the Sphinx is an artifact, not a skill in subterfuge. Wtf.

Achaean evade is a combination of Stealth evade AND mislead.

That leaves...

Stalk (pacing). Snoop(appraise). Sign(rattle). Truss(Binding).

Lusternia does a pretty good job of not carbon copying skillsets from other IRE games.


One idea Desitrus brought up I really like. Lowering the sheer number of people it takes to run guilds/orgs. I think most people would have preferred to see the other orgs opened over the new guilds. Monks/Bards have taken SO much of the Admin's time trying to revamp them, and both archetypes completely screw up combat balance. If the leadership required to run orgs was reduced and monks and bards just never introduced, the other three Orgs could have been opened. Conflict IS stale in Lusternia. I'm personally bored with fighting the same Celenwilders for the 1000th times. Heck, opening one might go a long way to injecting some life into Lusternia.

I also would like to reiterate how these guilds are also suffering RP wise. There are many reasons behind it. No long history of RPers to base it off of. The written histories are kind of meh. They are generally overshadowed by warriors. I don't know how to fix it :/

One idea I had was to involve the ninjakari with the Ninth House, but the Ninth House has no presence in the player base. It's completely a mob run House, but it's the only decent idea I've had that could anchor the Ninjakari to Magnagora.

This is an issue I'm definitely hoping is brought up. Bards and monks being disconnected from their communes/cities is a problem. I think the admin are planning on letting me change a bit of that with the Shofangi when the monk devs come out, but I'm not sure, and there are issues involving all the new guilds (harmony monks being unnecessary also comes into that, so Akui, let me know if you have any ideas!)

Never heard of a Ninth House, hrm.

The secret Ninth House you learn about when you do the Presidio quest. It's responsible for keeping the feuds between the other 8 houses from ripping Mag apart. I suppose Mag houses would need feuds first though...

You kinda forgot about Tracking. *shuffle* and monkey.

What's bad about PvE is that it is completely mindnumbing, unengaging, and repetitive with absolutely no redeeming qualities. There is nothing good to be said about IRE PvE and a fair bit of bad. You can't use your skills. You can completely predict your opponent. Lusternia has the best quests in all of IRE, and it still looks like a rancid pile of large mammalian feces next to even what the free graphical MMOs provide these days, and something is broken if Runescape does anything better than you. It has nothing to do with class balance and everything to do with "WTF, why bother?" The growth treadmill is an intrinsic part of all RPGs. Becoming stronger is a consistent theme. The act of becoming stronger, because it is an intrinsic part of this game as much as all other RPGs, should not drive people to gouge their eyes out with spoons.

I hate coming down on it so hard without anything positive to say, but there is really nothing positive to build off of. IRE PvE is horrible. It's really news to nobody. People bash as a chore to level up, or as a chore to get essence, or a chore to get gold, or a chore for guild advancement, or some rare few because it's mindless enough to let you clear your mind. Mindless enough to let you clear your mind is not entertainment, and that's the best anyone has ever said of bashing. Saving it would require someone somewhere in the IRE multiverse with more ambition than sense to tear down the entire existing system and find ways to incorporate PvE closer to tabletop or the major graphical MMOs.

Sometimes I find it to be good stress relief to mindlessly bash.

I think one of my friends talking about Guild Wars a few years ago said it best, "Sometimes I just want to...level up."

I think Lusternia bashing would be fine if the classes were just more balances. Tears of Polaris is going to let you afflict mobs. Not sure how complicated and/or fun that will be.

Despite some of the bad things I've brought up in this thread about Lusternia, I do have to say it does a ton of things right. The things I've mentioned here...basically just my opinion on PvE, is the only real gripe I have. We could use a few more hunting places, but we have an okay amount. If you want to look at another IRE game for inspiration on how to set up bashing, look at Imperian. They have a ton of hunting areas for each org for each level range. And they have these things called Rings which makes group hunting more realistic and fun.

I wouldn't mind knocking down aslarans. Annoying things when they do it to me.

Krokani knock down aslarans break limbs.

Pretty sure aslaran's knockdown too, the females are just mean.

I think female aslarans can knock down and break arms. Krokani knock down too yeah.

Either way, in retrospect, it wouldn't do anything because they would stand up instantly. Like when they fall asleep, and wake up and stand in one go.

Edit: Ninja'd by Dia.

I know the Tahtetso, RPly, are regarded mostly as borderline heathens (in Aison's case and a few other Celestines), because they were designed to act as if the Supernals are not important. Trying to find the light 'between' the Supernals or something (someone feel free to clarify though, it doesn't matter how many times it's explained to me.). I personally think it is ridiculous that this would be OK'd in the city of light, because all it does is create controversy between guilds, but what can you do?

Stealth obviously has copied abilities from Subterfuge/Predation - those skills are awesome and during development I wanted to copy as many of the awesome abilities as I could for obvious reasons. I don't see why this is even being argued - so many abilities are universal across IRE games, there's really zero reason to try and defend the position that 'our' abilities are somehow extra special.

Regarding monk guild RP, I honestly just have <3 for the Scorpion Caverns. Nekotai can't afford some of the changes required to work the Scorpion spirit in properly at the moment, but we're working on it!

Oh, one final last note thing:

Nothing lags Lusternia more then Ripple/Liveforest/Flux.

Whoever's idea was it to invent it, then make it free... sheesh.

It shouldn't be lagging anything. If you are noticing server lag from it (lag when it hits and you are in another room), let us know, but if you refer to the spam of it, that "lag" is all client side.

think he meaned lag in the sense of stall conflict. eg. When liveforest is put up Seren raid groups just leave etherglom cause it is to annoying to deal with.

I think that's the idea.

EDIT: Although, with the constructs that make liveforest/flux/ripple free, there's really no reason to not have it up whenever guild security is around. The only problem is that Celenwilde guilds have more security members around - probably more often, too - to keep them going as needed which is at least some deterrent to raids. Celestines and Nihilists are suffering most in that respect, I think.

Lusternia doesn't need more deterrents for raiders. Flux is annoying, rips apart groups, but it's manageable with walls. Ripple is really annoying, but again, manageable outside of an enemy demesne. Liveforest is just god awful. It cripples monks and anyone without contort is writhing 70% of the time. That remind me of another point:

WHY is raiding Etherwilde and Etherglom so much more difficult than Celestia/Nil? It's not even rewarding because killing the daughters/sisters (whatever they are called) don't even cost the forests power. Geos and Aquas can't meld, and liveforest has the previously mentioned problems. That and the avatars are just rough. I remember attacking the weakest one (luna?) and Albion showed up to defend and killed us all.

Yeah it's true, the Avatars are 1000x more powerful than Supernals or DL's.

The only two reasons that I can come up with as to why Etherwilde/Glom are so much harder to raid is because one, they do not have an Elemental plane to harvest essence from and two, when their Avatars die they lose 15k power, as opposed to 9k power.

I just do not think that is balanced compared to Ripple, Meldable cosmic planes and able to be entered by cubix.