I was going to post this on Estarra's thread but she closed it, so I will be so bold as to post it here instead. It would be good if we could carry out the on-topic discussion and constructive criticism originally asked.


Here are my two cents with my experience from playing Lusternia briefly and other IRE games:


- Philosophic conflict should not mandate military conflict between organizations. To prevent the mandate from happening, you typically create Gods/NPCs (in Lusternia this would be very easily done!) that purport tenets of tolerance, peace, pacifism, restraint, etc. When an organization gets out of hand, those Gods/NPCs have an amusing argument with the more aggressive deities and compromise on a ceasefire. Things like this ought to be reserved for extreme circumstances- like when lifeblood novices are being mowed down and quitting the game.

- Cities could do with more effective fortifications and guards. As it stands it seems easy to infiltrate a city and take out a non-combatant if they are standing anywhere but at the Nexus. You would figure that in an age of advanced planar technology, aether science, and spellcraft cities would be more defensible. Perhaps they should be given energy shields (like the one that protects the Necromentate that could be tuned against certain orgs (or just enemies) but temporarily disrupted after the Nexus was shattered, giving incentive to go bananas once in a while.

I also throw out the idea of Planes like Nil and Celestia being reachable only through fortified 'gateplanes', which would be something liken to the domoths if I understand the concept. Miniature battlefields, utilizing a large variety of constructs (gates, portals, destroyable walls, turrets, colossi), city powers, and low HP, medium damage NPC guards that could be ordered (patrol, go to Checkpoint, etc.) but not led by players.


- I would love subjugation, but the important thing is that an organization can bounce back. As it is the balance of power seems to rely heavily on the efforts combatants. What if the strength of a city's culture (among other things yet to be added?) affected how long they could be subjugated before the people turned out in revolt and furious NPCs filled the streets to 'shrug off' the chains of their oppressors? What if each village's resources determined


In Summary/ The Short Version:

- Newly returned Gods (could be the handful of survivors from the First Circle!) interested in bringing order back to the first world could voice their objections to raids that were counter-productive, i.e. not aimed towards conquest.

- In order to conquer a city, you must break through its gateplane(s) and knock out its Nexus. This task as a whole could require a substantial amount of time (a couple of weeks?).



After a city rebels, the rebels who are presumed to have been preparing give it a boost of power, its shields go up, and basic gateplane defenses turn on. This would prevent Nil and the city proper from being immediately crushed again.

The challenge would be coming up with rewards as incentive for conquest, to make it worthwhile. (Temporary artifacts/artifact effects from drawing off a Nexus? Double exp week? Think things that reward the conquerors without tangibly penalizing the dominated too much.)

While I tend to agree generally, just for the record, Lusternia seems to behave like it's guildhalls that are supposed to be nigh-impenetrable, and in fact raiding inside them is generally pretty tricky. Making the whole city/commune impenetrable would tend to cripple a lot of conflict stuff without replacing it, which might not be a good thing.

I agree the admins should probably look at beefing up city/commune defenses (guards, like supermobs, seem to need periodic buffing to keep them even with increasing numbers of ascending/demigod/artifacted/skill-upgraded players, as well as with the addition of more infiltration skills without that many counters). And a few other changes (like the one to reduce the number of entrances to Serenwilde that happened a while back) might be in order.

But I doubt they'll go for any proposal which makes cities and communes as hard to raid as guildhalls are now. Maybe players should, if they find this a real concern, start doing more of their gathering in guildhalls. (Might also help with the guard influence spam issue.)

Anyone who's played Aetolia will probably agree that impeneterable cities make for boring times. There are enough places that you can go to stay safe, while keeping cities/communes somewhat vulnerable retains the chances for conflict opportunities...which is a GOOD thing.

Maybe it is not the actually raiding that people are complaining about, but rather the subsequent mop up?

Edit: Ack, hit the send button instead of preview. Erm, anyway, I was going to say that perhaps instead of looking for ways to reduce raiding, we look at ways to make recovery less painful. I've not thought of any concrete ideas yet though.

If it is popular opinion, shirk the guards. The key concepts behind this one were threefold:

- Make what Celest has wreaked on Magnagora and vise-versa take a longer amount of time to accomplish, so that the defenders have more time to rally.

- (The important one) Install a feature, such as subjugation, so that these raids and their cleanup will not be perpetual. When the subjugation period ends, allow defenses to go back up so that the conquerors cannot immediately begin the cycle over again. This will decrease the stress for those involved in the org and thereby hopefully encourage a freer flow of new players/alts to an area.

- Give neat, enjoyable, fun incentive to partake, without taxing the 'losers' too harshly.

My biggest complaint has always regarded XP in PvP. Granting that I lose more than I win in group combat, it hasn't been unheard of for me to also be in raids where my group takes out the other group pretty cleanly (and I've even gotten winning hits every so often)... and the XP loss to gain is way disproportionate. Sorry, but if I kill someone twenty levels above me, I should see some pretty significant gains. Because killing someone gets you almost no XP reward, I end up losing fifty times what I can gain, and thus after every encounter am forced to go and grind a few levels for what I've lost.

Isuka was stuck at level 60 for a -long- time, because he'd go into combat, get dropped back down to 55, grind up to about 65, get knocked back down to 55...

So maybe rethink xp loss/gain in PvP so that raiding isn't quite so annoying, and then maybe people will be more willing to go out and fight. I always liked landmarking in Aetolia because whatever I lost I always ended up gaining back... and if I did well I could pull a couple of levels from it.

Lusternia is the easiest IRE game to retain/gain xp in.

Aetolia has some nice xp gain from pvp though I can't say I've ever really seen major losses in xp from pvp in lusternia. Bashing in lusternia is easy, all it takes is a little initiative and a balance trigger. There's not really any reason you should be stuck at any one level, really. I played a bard for a month or so and bashed/pk'd to level 84 in a couple of weeks. So really, xp gains from PK isn't bad at all. Maybe you just die too much.

Sure, if you have limitless free time to grind (or influence, if you have cash to spend on the skill), it's plenty easy. I'd really prefer to spend what time I have in the game engaging in PvP (be it raiding, arena, whatever) than grinding.

I -hate- grinding. I know I am not alone in this.

That said, your comment does not invalidate the argument that xp gain to loss in PvP is highly disproportionate.

You are not alone.

Well, there is supposed to be a drawback to death I believe.

5.7 DEATH AND DYING

blah

The thing to keep in the forefront of your mind when you die is that as long as
you know why you died, and as long as you learn something from the death, it
was worthwhile. Experience in gaming terms is lost, but it can just be gained
back. Knowledge on the other hand, is priceless, and knowledge of your skills
and the game is the single most important element to success.

Learn why you died, learn to not do that, learn to kill more people. Learn, Learn, Learn, Practice, Practice, Practice. Anyone can tell you that to be better at whatever you are trying to do you have to practice at it. I recall losing to you when I was a noob in a spar and you being a dick to me and all that but I guess that's RP and it was a nice day when I owned you in a spar after a lot of practice and learning and in turn with further practice and learning becoming one of Magnagora's top fighters.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't lose xp when you die. I'm saying you should gain more xp from killing. Especially from killing someone much higher level than you. I killed someone in solo combat once in lusternia who was ranked in the 100s when I was level 65, and got a measly few percent from it. That's a garbage reward for managing to kill someone who by all means should kill me with no effort.

Or be an artifact warrior ascendant who didn't have to grind.

Just out of curiosity, what's the gain of raiding cities? The only thing that really harms cities are killing guards which costs the city gold/essence to replace. And guards are bought to protect the city ... from those who seek to kill guards? *ahem* It just seems more lucrative to raid other planes or villages.

It's considered "fun" to destroy loyals and fill up org logs with deaths.

It also has a negative effect on your opponents (see all the posting of said logs in rants-- it's "pwnage" even people who weren't logged in get to enjoy!-- along with comments of, "Why isn't the thing I killed in there??").

You get to feel big and stop some people from finishing quests for about an hour.
Aside from that its an epeen thing.

What Xenthos said. Basically, for the fun of it. The main reason it isn't done as much is suspect getting in the way.

There is a morale thing. Whether you call it epeen, or ego stroking, or whatever. There is a morale boost for the raiding city and demoralizing feeling for the raided city.

When this is done with restraint. i.e not nightly at 4am for 2 weeks straight. It can be fun, even for the raided city. It gives them something to RP as a "we must build up our strength and yadda yadda"

It only gets bad when it is done every night for countless nights and knowing full well that every time you do it you are doing it with no chance of being stopped.

Despite what many people complain about I have witnessed players in Glomdoring asking on OOC clans for Serenwilde to raid them because they want some conflict and a chance to fight off a raid and in fact some of our raids on Glomdoring have been due to this. The small 2 -3 man raids are usually because of friendly banter in clans where it was asked "hey you guys should raid us, there are a lot of us on and it would be fun to have a chance to fight back against you."

I (generally) don't hear or see 2-3 man raids being complained about, as a member of Glomdoring.

2-3 man raids also aren't generally romping around the Prime city slaying piles of loyals, so I think they're slightly different situations.