but wouldn't it be so awesome to see that sort of internal struggle? I mean let's say they do end up accepting the child, imagine all those beggars and street wenches that can't even enter the city proper being so upset!

Yes. Sweet Narsrim's noserims, yes. This- This is what should fill the aethers. This is a fine sort of canned win with which our forums should be Spammed.

Please. I entreat you, creative development department.

Please: morally ambiguous, open-ended subplots. Not only are they fun, but these things are how orgs and characters are truly defined- their philosophies in action, poetry in motion.

It gives the playerbase so much more incentive to log in each day. You give them one event like this (well-thought out and polished) and it will keep the momentum for as long as months on end. Imagine if you gave them one every 1-2 months? So long as Lusternia were such a wondrous place, I would spring for credits on a regular basis.

Concentrate your energies on such events, with occasional periods of rest, and you will have mastered the key to what makes a the pillar of a good roleplaying atmosphere.

On a totally different topic, I'd like to nix future events for new areas. I think they are lame. I think it'd be so much cooler if while suddenly walking around X, some person discovered some sort of secret path or what not that no one else did and then news of the area could spread through gossip!

And then maybe later there could be an event there. I hate how the whole exploration aspect is botched by someone calling out for assistance for the most mundane stuff when for the last bazillion years they've kept their mouth shut.

Oh, I do think that kind of thing would be awesome. Small social events that make people have to make tough philosophical decisions are always awesome.

I just always think it's so funny that Celest keeps their poor folks outside.

Celest is supposed to sparkle. It can't very well sparkle if dirty people are brushing up against walls and traipsing their plebian dust all over the streets. We let non-Merians live in the city. I think that's enough social change.

An event like Narsrim talked about would be a lot more entertaining than the average event. Part of the challenge would be retraining player expectations though so they actually participate in it like their participation/decisions matter. And the kind of work this sort of event involves isn't anything to sneeze at. Still, would be fun to participate in. It'd be even nicer if things like this were announced so people could log on for it if they wanted. Not the details but the idea that you should probably show up on such and such a day around such and such a time.

I was under the impression that Celest has no beggars. We just take in refugees.

Unemployed, dirty refugees who become...?

I whole-heartedly agree and would love to see this happen. Whenever I stumble into an area I've never been before, everything's all new and shiny and it's great to just wander around and poke things to see what happens.

Supplicants for novices.

EDIT: And I like Narsrim's idea and the idea about L4D style zombie invasions.

Unemployed clean refugees.

Or drowned ones.

Either way, sleeping on the streets when they're always covered in water is going to change them in some way!

The water's not supposed to be that deep? It's not like we deluge the city on a regular basis.

People tend to move in their sleep.

Lovely little sores develop if you don't! Old people have to be turned a lot in their nursing home beds.

Also endorsing Narsrim's exploration idea, on the off-chance that it matters. I daresay there are few high points like discovering a hidden room beneath a river that no one has mapped, and saying nothing to anyone about it.

Shamarah, I apologize about your thread...

As long as it eventually winds up on the map. I've been playing this game for years now and I still need Caffery's map to get around.

My two cents:

I think the problem with combat in Lusternia lies solely in the discrepancy. The systems of PK used in WoW or WAR are far too simplistic to apply to Lusternia - gear or gold rewards for killing others would just be silly - but the developers of those games are able to balance around two things: spec, and gear.

Blizzard has always said that WoW was never intended to be balanced around 1v1 combat, but for a long time they actually achieved that pretty well (while I was playing hardcore, 2006-2008). There were obvious exceptions, like no one being able to kill a good druid solo, shamans being useless against melee, a mage being a hard counter to a warrior - but all in all, you could wander up to someone, duel them, and stand a good chance of winning. The primary factors in determining victory were how good your gear was compared to the other guy, and what spec you had: these dictated the relative amount of skill you had to have to win, anywhere from easy to impossible.

The most important thing in those popular MMOs is that level - which is just an indication of how long you've been playing the game for - didn't factor into it at all. You could log on to a friend's max level character, work out which button did what through the intuitive tooltips, and run around to smash face in a Battleground with nothing more to think about. My little brother did that often when he came to visit - he'd jump on my rogue and just run around smashing the 2 key - and, far from being the instagibbed pile of goo you'd find in Lusternia, he was able to stay alive for quite a while and do a bit of damage. The barrier for entry in combat in those games is very low, because balancing is performed solely around max level, and everyone has access to the same, entry level gear.

This is where Lusternia suffers. The 'max level' has been achieved by a grand total of about 60 players. The vast majority of Lusternia's players, and therefore potential pool of combatants, are never going to invest the time and effort to get to the max level - consider that 1-80 in WoW is something like 7 days /played, while getting 100 in Lusternia seems to be a whole lot more effort. You can pick up WoW and in a month of casual play be able to compete in PvP against all but the highest tier of combatants: that's just not possible here.

In addition to the level problem, Lusternia has the pay-for-skill system. It's been said many times on these forums that to compete in combat, you need to have several transed skills, which means at some point you need to farm for/purchase/be gifted with thousands of credits. Using the WoW analogy, after that one month of casual play, you have every skill your class can ever possibly possess for PvP, excluding the PvP trinket. So for the 70$ of the game, and your first 15$ monthly payment, you get everything (which, granted, isn't much: maybe 20-30 skills all up). For Lusternia, that's just not the case, and unless you have megabucks or the ability to bash 24/7 the path to attaining the base level of combat proficiency will be a long and arduous one. Artifacts just rub salt in the wound.

Bear in mind that all of this doesn't even take into account the balancing of skills: most Lusternians, they will never even access them. But when it comes time to take advantage of all of those credits, to actually use the skill in combat, Lusternia's devs are faced with the same problem of those of any game: trying to balance skill X against class Y. This also doesn't take into account the problem of curing, the requirement for a system, the sheer number of abilities and strategies other players can use against you...

So with such high entry requirements, is it really little wonder that PK is a little stunted? With so many barriers, and essentially no incentive to partake in PK, who in their right mind would do so? And how can it be fixed?

For starters, if the devs really want to encourage new players to be involved with PvP - and there's no indication that they do - they have to enable easier access to those barriers. Demigod and omnitrans, systems and artifacts, have to become widely available for the average Joe so that they can begin to understand that combat doesn't equal being killed in one hit. One way of doing this is inspired by the 'Bolster' buff you find in WAR scenarios: in a level 1-11 battleground, everyone below level 8 is treated as level 8. You could reasonably make a new kind of arena game, for example, that allowed players to spar each other as though they were omnitrans demigods, then have particular PK events where the buff is spread to everyone in a certain area. Even the playing field. Make combat matter slightly more about execution than raw amount of time and money invested in the game.

Alternatively, or additionally, the devs can give players a reason to fight each other by drastically increasing the experience gained by combat. Note that doesn't mean experience lost: only experience gained. Divorce PK experience from level and have it related purely to relative might: if you kill someone that is 300% of your might, you should be looking at a drastic increase of you're own xp. The experience gained from this method should peak during the 90s, when fighting enemy combatants becomes by far the most effective way of gaining circles. Checks and balances would obviously be in place - removing xp gain from killing commune/city mates, reducing the amount of xp for each subsequent kill of an individual - but ultimately the main reason anyone should be killing anyone is to increase their own power.

Finally, the amount of bound credits received for certain lessons should be -drastically- increased. Bound credits can only be spent on lessons or artifacts for the individual character, so there is no potential for abuse, and with the sheer number of skills in the game, new players need all the help they can get. Bound credits should be front loaded, with closer to 50 credits given for level 20, and up to around 600 given in total by the time the player reaches level 80. That would give a huge incentive for players to bash out their levels, since they can get a couple guild skills transed up and at least be relatively decent in a group situation (considering many classes have their instakills at trans). I highly doubt that the original founders of Achaea, when they implemented the bound credit system for gaining levels, could comprehend how essential omnitrans skills are today: and it's high time that it changed.

For about the tenth time:

Demigod is not necessary to compete on the top tier unless you are a warrior.

The rest of your post I agree with, however I can't see IRE adjusting their business model like that.

Why should only warriors be hindered

Demigod is not, but you can't take more than a couple of hits unless your at least 85 (which I believe extends to all classes)

I took lots of hits at 84.

Combat scares me. The mixed signals I get on the forums make me very apprehensive about my investment in the game. Nonetheless, I want a moderate amount of mature conflict. I am going to try something wild- take the initiative to learn combat and make a stand. If I do not succeed, then I shall fling myself nobly onto the field of battle like the valiant toothpick against panzer tanks that I am. If other folks about my size did the same, we might get our own tier (high > middle > low > lol).

While we hope and protest for what appears to be long-anticipated change, I see three basic choices:
- Hunt to Demigod/pull a rabbit out of a hat and get Ascendant, and still lose from lack of knowledge and practice.
- Give up on combat/Lusternia and abandon all hope.
- Enter the fray with all newbs blazing, fight the good fight, and go down in a blaze of echoing afflictions.

My point is, even if the odds are utterly against us, so long as we make the effort we can carve out a niche. Encourage every novice to fight and get them a free system. Make due with enough willing . R-right?