I agree with this point, and I'm afraid I don't like the idea.

These are my reasons why.

- Aside from xp gain, it provides no benefits: because
o if you want to bash in groups, you can already do so;
o if you want to talk while you bash, and to the people you are bashing with, you can already do so.

- As far as xp gain is concerned, I can understand why the idea is attractive, but I feel that we already err too much on the easy side for xp gain and retention and that it will not profit Lusternia to make bashing any eaiser.

- Additionally, it is likely, as Nepthysia has explained (and her explanation accords with my experience), to become another means of OOC communication which will, again, lead to the detriment of the game.

Yes you can already bash in groups, but apart from broken Astral farming there is nowhere it is really on a similar level of efficiency to solo bashing. MAYBE illithoid because of the lifesteal. Mostly it just slows you down.

People want rings because bashing solo is kind of boring and bashing in groups is at least LESS tedious: if you don't like rings, are there any other directions you could take it?

Possible, yes, conveniant or desireable? No.

Every time I have tried to bash in groups, I have either been reminded as to how inefectual it is at helping people level, and how hard it is to talk to the people and be social. (because of deafness afflictions, and wind, and stupdity, and insanity and the like)

I agree with Fain's assessment, which is why I said in my initial response to this thread that such an idea would have to be integrated into Lusternia with a compelling roleplaying mechanic to go with it. It can't just be a "tacked on" way to hunt with friends a little more effectively.

Wind. How sick I am of teaching a novice about something in the mountains and having to explain how wind works, where it is, why they should use tells, and why that thing I just told them to say didn't result in the bard/scholar following them.

I swear it only exists to frustrate people into putting points in environment.

/derail.

The real question is why you would leave a system that's disliked by half of the playerbase in place as the only efficient way to make major mechanical progress in the game. Maybe, rather than trying to save solo bashing, the best solution is to add new methods of substantial xp gain, start treating level 100 like the level cap in a modern graphical MMO, and add more content with an eye to demigods with the assumption that most serious players will get there in a reasonable amount of time.

Depending on the definition of a 'serious player', I don't think a reasonable amount of time is always reasonable.

I've been playing on Lusternia for at least the past three years and I'm still not a demigod - Level 90 at 64.69% and counting. For Vashner who's always wanted to be an Avatar and probably won't be able to now that Lord Morgfyre is mostly gone, it's going to be a sad day when he makes Demigod. Going back to the point, while I could have probably made demigod much earlier, most people would either have other things to do (ie. school) or really annoying parents who come during revolts/events and ask you to get off Lusternia. Hence there are really a lot of factors to decide how much time we have.

With regards to the grouping, after going through the revolt in Acknor today, I realized that grouping may allow for more dynamic means of EXP sharing. Both Vashner and Esano 'slew' a number of people through demesne, taking all the experience for work Izekeal, Romero and Melville probably put in. Grouping would allow artillery units, ie mages and druids with range attacks to share XP evenly across all members of a team. Mages and Druids tend to be not as tanky and since they're usually at the top of the target list, it's better for them to stay out. It's more of a combat mechanic than RP though, unless you want to RP having a pure artillery group - then you can also create a totally new skillset for warrior class which focuses only on using bows and crossbows, or javelins.

Just an addendum to put in I didn't before, though it's not about skills, but...

... when I play MMO's, I look at two things. One, the graphics. Two, the party system. I always play one of two roles in MMO's, and that's the cleric/healer or the tank. There are a lot of other players out there like me. In fact, on an MMO I have played, there are some pretty good writers and people who like RP, and I even convinced one to try Lusty once. They left shortly after realizing that although there were pretty text-painted images and lots of RP, there was no real "party system" to take away the boredom of bashing, and left.

I've always seen Lusternian combat and roleplay as centered around groups. We discourage rogues, and we encourage organizational conflict alot. I agree with a number of people in this thread; it would be nice to have a 'party system', as Myrkr puts it, for bashing.

Put reasonable rp restrictions on groups, and you won't have the OOC issues. I don't think its really that complicated.

Perhaps, if a member of say celest joins a group who's leader is from serenwilde, maybe put a mention in the logs.

10/10/10 12:12:12 : CelestMemberA, has joined the squad of SerenMemberB.

If orgs have a problem with that sort of grouping, they will make rules against it. If they don't, they won't.

Make it a separate log or something... oooh with a little office in each org and a repressed minion forced to kept track of all the different groups, who will complain about the paperwork involved in inviting people from other orgs into groups.

Dude... that'd be hilarious! Like, if too many groups start forming inter-org hunting parties, the guy will start yelling about the paperwork on the CT.

I can certainly understand this argument. Role-playing is absolutely paramount in these games. Role-play is the one thing that text based games offer that huge commercial games (read: graphical MMOs) can never seem to touch, and it's inherent to the game's vehicle, particularly emoting. There's a disassociation between character and player when you type in an emote and watch your character stand there and not do it.

That said: I disagree with the idea that something most players would probably enjoy (and a large number have come forward to state it) being dismissed simply because of the possibility of OOC behavior. Furthermore: I believe that certain exceptions should exist for the sole purpose of play-enjoyment. When it comes down to it, many people believe that bashing is mind-numbingly boring. It's something that is basically required if you wish to engage in combat (a level 5 character stands no chance what-so-ever) and there are few alternatives to level-gain that don't also basically constitute mind-numbing command spamming.

So, introducing something that may enhance the enjoyment of such an activity should be more important than concerns that it may be abused for OOC purposes. After-all, every single player in Lusternia is there to enjoy themselves on one level or another.

Also, let us consider the options of enhanced party management. Instead of looking at a group simply as a leader and x number of followers, we can (and should) look at it more as a group of like-minded individuals pursuing a common goal - even if said goal is the slaughter of many NPCs for the purpose of level grinding. Each member of the party has a function: healing, casting reflections, putting up demesne in PvP combat, scouting ahead, soaking damage, et cetera. We already have this functionality built into the game, and already grouping is an essential function in raiding combat. Why not enhance this to fully acknowledge the importance of fighting as a cohesive unit? Why not also expand this to acknowledge that some members of a group are far more important and useful not standing in the middle of a fight?

This is a long-winded point, I know, and I'm sorry for drawing it out thusly. However, this is all to pose opposition to the notion that implementing a group function to Lusternia would pose no other benefit than XP sharing. Hell, drop the XP sharing out of it entirely if you want. Lets not look at this as a way of copying the other IRE game's simple grouping systems but as a way of completely blowing them away.

Finally, let me come full circle back to the start of this post: Role-playing is the one thing that the large commercial games can not touch, because of the limitations that graphical avatars pose. However, the party elements that draw so many players to those games is something that Lusternia can touch. It is something that we could even beat. I ask that this notion of a group system in Lusternia not be dismissed as naught more than an attempt at an OOC chat channel to make bashing less boring, but as a radical improvement to the combat system of Lusternia as a whole.