So a lot of people are deterred by the lack of a good free usable system? Would people be interested if I were to share my mudbot system, then?

What? Systems cost between 30cr to 100cr. A skill from inept to trans, without any bonuses is roughly 286cr. Multiply that by how many ever skills that are essential and the system is nothing. It's not the cost that is the problem. Systems are generally made for those who make them. People with a programming background will have a large advantage here, which isn't going to change. As more and more skills are added to the game with more special effects, trying to make or even maintain a good working system is going to be harder and harder. Programming isn't something you can just pick up overnight and people actually want to play the game, rather than learn how to make their system do something.

Somehow I think it's mostly just excuses

It's normally the "offensive" aspect of the system that people are missing, and I'm pretty sure you can't really give people that. (cause they have different comfort levels of alias vs macro etc)

I think you should preface the question by asking "which people who previously were doing all the fighting, no longer are" and "where did they go?"

I'm going to throw my two cents in and agree with the consensus of many of the non-combatant posters.

I've always wanted to get into combat but quite frankly, I don't see the point. It seems like a massive credit investment for skills, and a lot of time spent actually learning combat and learning how to code/use a system. I am willing to put in time to learn the latter. After all, I'm spending free time playing a computer game. But I'd like to think there's a point to me spending so much time learning these things.

Every time I've made an (admittedly half-assed) attempt to get involved in combat it seems like there's just too much to learn and too many skills I don't have.

Also, there was a point made earlier that you only "need" Demi to combat with the highest tier of combatants. Well, who's going to start a new facet of the game and say "You know what? I'm only going to take the necessary steps to be mid-level or mediocre here. I'd rather not even bother trying to excel."

So yeah, that's my ignorant opinion.

First, Lusternia is way better off in some regards. You have conflict mechanisms, that is revolts, weakenings, etc - things that create the opportunity for combat. In Aetolia, where I come from, we have player-made RP and player-driven perogatives, with the constant chance of being issued, which always led to (at best) fairy empty and bland conflict, if not completely contrived situations and mindsets.

The war system fixed that somewhat (perhaps overmuch) and suddenly combat abounded. That's why I disappeared. And then, tada, the war ended and everything went back to suck, so here I am back in Lusty.

On the other hand, the combat system in Lusty itself is very, very biased to the top end. As a level 84 78 (war, and I don't regret the losses!) fighter in Aet, I can sit toe to toe with most people and, at the least, hold my own through good use of my skills. That simply isn't the same in Lusternia. The endgame advantages here are crazy, as are shrine powers - the sum effect is fully entrenching the top people in the top, with newer people having an inordinately hard time against them.

End conclusion is clearly the unexpected and evil glare @ Desi - how dare you pull me back to an open-PK game with flexible combat? I have such great counter-examples to be playing instead!

Demi is only a necessity if you are a warrior. As any other class it is merely a luxury. I'm only level 86!

For me, the nail in the coffin was bards. After bards were released I stopped updating my system and stopped caring about combat. Monks just, well, pushed the nail through the other side. GG.

@ Shamarah - do you have an alt? I don't mean this in offense, but I've never heard of you as a combatant in the game.

None that I play actively. Maybe we're logged on at different times? I've never heard of you as a combatant either unless your character is different from your forum name.

Am not a big combatant here (which is kinda the point, only level 85, not demi), but now that I've been told who you are, in the IRE general pantheon, and all I can say is f u for nerfing my howl/axethrow. Bish.

<3...

... Moirean?

Now you two can make out.

Duh.

edit: wow. Desininja made my response take on an entirely new meaning.

To me, this says a lot.

I remember when I first started playing way back when, being a Seren and getting beaten six different ways from Sunday by Ixion and crew. When the people behind the characters who were the ultimate baddies who struck fear into the hearts of your character say this sort of thing, I'm willing to back it.

Problems that kill conflict:

Too much complexity. Every time something new and 'important' comes out, if I'm on the border line of not caring about the game, that usually finishes me off. Why invest the time to get new supplies/get new triggers/learn a new feature/learn a new skillset when I don't really enjoy the time I am spending now. Easier to just quit, or use lusternia as a chat room, then deal with another feature that will throw the already unbalanced things even further out.

Not much equality between classes. Demi knights blow away nearly everyone. If a demi knight jumps you, the best 90% of the game can hope for is getting away. Also, monks. Both classes are capable of overwhelming nearly everyone in pk (especially monks, not so much most of the knights, but the extremes are common enough to be discouraging), and both are better at bashing. It was frustrating to me that I have to work so much harder then a knight or monk to get demigod, and I imagine I'm not the only one turned off by that.

As many have said, high cost of entry. No matter how much the admins deny it, you need a ton of stuff. I don't have a ton of experience because I never really pk'd in any other IRE game, but even then I didn't get the sense of 'I'm going to need this to exist' like I did here.

The alchemy/enchantment thing. Cities will never alienate both communes, and communes will never alienate both cities, even with the bard trade skills that came out recently. There's only so much that can happen when you're afraid to offend people on the other side of the trades. Even fighting one commune, you have to be careful because who knows what could happen (event, reckless citizens) that might mess things up with the other commune.

Not much reason to fight. Yeah, we could raid Nil... but why? At best, we could get 9k power, but again, why? Get a big group, crush the competition of you can get situated before the ridiculous amount of area defense go up. Prime raiding isn't worth trying because of the avenger flaws. Successes have becomes harder and less worth obtaining to keep people from getting burnt out, but this has the effect of being rather dull for people who want to do things in a game.

Not sure how I'd fix most of that. I think a good way to go would be to make all the stuff that we have balanced and fun and bugless before adding new things, but all change happens at a snails pace through the envoy process, and the big, 'balancing' adjustments that do happen don't really seem to improve things, and a lot of big changes that everyone seems to want get put off forever (such as forging, making monks and bards 'fit' better)

Also, this is a general question for fighty people. And I'm really quite sincere in asking.

What exactly is the best way to go about learning combat?

I ask because I feel like you'll have to find someone who already knows your class/skills and so on. Back when the notion of being a combatant occurred to me a few months ago, I asked Ceren for some help. While he answered all my questions and was quite helpful in explaining things, it was mostly basic stuff I was asking. (Like, is dracnari a viable race as a Geomancer combatant? Should I keep Runes or ditch it?)

I feel like if I wanted to get more detailed help, I'd have to be bugging some established fighter all the time. And that doesn't seem very fun for the other guy.

Sure and then this whole cycle goes over again and people say:

BUT NOTHING NEW EVER HAPPENS IN LUSTERNIA! IMPERIAN GOT NEW CLASSES WHY DONT WE? YOU SAID AT SOME POINT WE'D GET NEW CLASSES! BAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW



Edit @Volroc: Well, I used to tend to teach people that wanted to learn. Even that pie freak Tervic. You get your advice, you get what works, and then you spar x200. Do you have any idea how many spars I had as Sintor my first two months here? I mean, good lord. I probably spent more time in the arena than in the actual game for those months. You don't have to do that, but you do need to spend a lot of time fighting (and losing) to get better. This is also how you become familiar with your system. You want to know how it reacts in fight situations. You don't want to find out that someone's sap curing is really bad when you walk into an active demesne and get beastweb/sapped instantly.

Spar. Spar everyone. Weak or strong. If they kill you in 10 seconds, figure out how to last 25.

The thing is, when other games add classes, they generally add one guild with maybe 2-3 new afflictions at most. When Lusternia adds classes, they add four guilds with potentially massive numbers of afflictions and trigger lines and entirely new mechanics between them.

It doesn't change that people would have bitched for new classes if we hadn't gotten one in three years does it? People aren't going to be happy on the whole, but they could stand to be happier than they are now with it. I remember the last time a thread like this popped up and "S"omeone said "What issues?" and then the mud as a whole could barely come up with three things that were old and needed fixing before new things came in.

? The last few times this has come up I've dragged out a list of 8 or so things, from previous times it's come up. Should I go find them again?

Off of the top of my head I'll throw out:
Monks, Ascendance, Ascendants, Domoths, Weakenings.