I did not vote.

Can someone put my vote in for "reduce" please? Just because I want it to be a tie!

Repeating what a friend of mine said on Skype. He doesn't play Lusternia all that much, though, so he doesn't have a forum account:

"Conflict produced by game mechanics are pretty much the worst thing imaginable as any conflict created will be contrived, have no real meaning, grow repetitious, be hated by everyone, and overall simply be boring. Conflict can only be meaningful if it's based on some set of beliefs (which the organizations have) and is produced in a way that is actually important to the players. Players and admin should work together to create unique conflict between orgs, rather than rely on game mechanics to take care of things for them."

Edit for another part I found:

"Just - mechanized conflict != good conflict, as it grows stale really really really fast and in the end, nobody cares about it but you have to do it. Otherwise, you'll be at a disadvantage."

Likewise find myself agreeing.

(even if he's a jerk )

Repeating what a friend of mine said on Skype. He doesn't play Lusternia all that much, though, so he doesn't have a forum account:

"Conflict produced by game mechanics are pretty much the worst thing imaginable as any conflict created will be contrived, have no real meaning, grow repetitious, be hated by everyone, and overall simply be boring. Conflict can only be meaningful if it's based on some set of beliefs (which the organizations have) and is produced in a way that is actually important to the players. Players and admin should work together to create unique conflict between orgs, rather than rely on game mechanics to take care of things for them."

Edit for another part I found:

"Just - mechanized conflict != good conflict, as it grows stale really really really fast and in the end, nobody cares about it but you have to do it. Otherwise, you'll be at a disadvantage."

Likewise find myself agreeing.

(even if he's a jerk )

Computer games and RPGs that involve interaction with other people are completely different. If there's a good response to that it's what Gwylifar said.

The answer is that none of those are designed to simulate anything on the scale of an interpersonal RPG, where you pretend to be another person. This makes all the difference.
I notice you mention WOW, but at the end of the day that's not how the graphical MMO genre works.

Getting this discussion back on course, here are some things that are occurring to me or that I am hearing that have some traction for me:

Rewards for participating in conflict situations: Several people have said this is a good idea in theory but it is still extremely vague to me how it would work in practice. How do you determine when there is a conflict? I think somehow 'flagging' people would end up being a nightmare which just leaves designating certain areas as conflict areas which means anyone in the area would benefit from the 'rewards'. So what would these rewards be? If the 'reward' is not losing xp if you are defending the area, what is the reward for attacking the area? Is it more xp? In that case, one could simply up the xp in the area overall for everyone and call it a day. But if there is an xp increase on those areas/planes, could people somehow be able to game this? Be rather nice if you don't lose xp for defending a plane as well as getting increased xp for questing/killing on that plane! Maybe that's okay, maybe not. One thing I wouldn't really want to see is a complex systems of if's, and's and but's which would make it difficult for many players to understand (not to mention difficult to code).

Too complex for me to address right now.

Remove power loss from the city vs. commune quests: These are new quests and am on the fence whether they should be adjusted before really having a chance to see them in action more.

Will wait on this one

Make the quest for the Star/Necromentate easier: This would be simple enough. My only thought is that no one has mentioned the Flame/Drums quests in the communes. Note that the commune quests need a lot more timing and the city quests can just plow through to the end of their quest (i.e., it may take communes a RL day to time their quest--more if they mis-time it--whereas cities would be able to just finish it in a few hours--or how many hours would be appropriate). That said, we don't want the quests to be the same for all four organizations but I'm wondering if people have thought that through.

Communes quest is definitely much much worse, anyone remember the revolt against the baby slaying serenwilde?

Have nihilists and celestines keep their pacts if their entities die: I'm not sure it is feasible to block the guardian powers while maintaining the pacts. I have always liked the RP of this and am not crazy about losing this feature.

This is what made me twitch. You like the RP, but you arent the one playing. If you take combat seriously then losing half of your offense (the major passive part) everytime theres a raid and then watching every member blow 10 power per slain lord (and people do get allotments) and then redoing all the spikes to get their symbol back should seem like a flaw. I wanted to be able to enter PvP, but if Celest raided and killed Nifilhema I lose shackles, my only passive method to wrack (at the time) or torture. If they killed Gorgulu I lost a staple of guardian combat of the time, anorexia. Lusternia is based around PvP and this is the only event I can think of where the RP destroys wanting to even be online (since even your bashing is smashed). P.S. I think wiccans are even fairly decently off if all their avatars die, they can usually fight without the specific ones.

Make raising avatars/supernals/demon lords easier: What if moondancers/shadowdancers/celestines/nihilists simply get a bonus to raise them? That'd be an rp solution that gives those guilds a little more importance with the bond between them and their associations.

This makes more sense, still adjust the pact loss though

Remove the nexus world conflict quests: I still haven't really heard good arguments to keep it and am still leaning at their removal (either permanent or temporary).

Ideally I would say keep most of whats there, make weakenings rarer and make it so you cant lose tons of constructs or else make them come back faster. The system is basically what people have noted, a place where you can open PK its just really hard to get to is the issue. Its a good area, and constructs are both helpful and neat to have around. They just shouldn't be a chore instead of an aide.

Is your argument basically that MUDs aren't Video Games? Cause otherwise I don't see the difference.

Cause that is exactly how graphical MMOs work. If you don't do the grind to get the levels and good equip then you miss out in the mechanics of the game that are opened by doing those things.

In Lusternia, every piece of power can be drained from your nexus, and every Smob can be killed, and if all you are interested in is creating tailoring designs, or building your aethermanse with credits you sell on the credit market, your game isn't affected.

It's no different than a video game with an extensive chat room, and to suggest otherwise is to dress it up and hide the facts.

If someone wants to play Lusternia to win, who are you to tell them they're not allowed to do that? Is there something at character creation or in the TOS that says that Lusternia is not to be played to win?

There are many ways to play Lusternia. Playing to win is one of them, even if there is no explicit victory condition.

Quite the opposite - it's when you think playing to win ("with a chatroom") is the -only- way to play that something has gone awry. Lusternia isn't the kind of game that is equipped to handle actual playing to win, but that's a quality of the game, not the players.

How is it unable to be played "to win" any more than any other persistent online game?

Other than the graphics and community culture, I'm not seeing the difference between Muds and Graphical MMOs

Whichever org had to fight the other two would bitchbitchbitch and beg for a fourth org to balance things out.

It's not that you can't make the effort, it's that the game setup isn't equipped to cope with attempts and you get an extensive array of exploits (remember pooka cannibalise/toad back in the day?) Things like no-way-of-balancing-teams get in the way too - actual pvp competition that's taken seriously in MMOs like guildwars and WoW is given a level playing field.

EDIT: But this is kind of tangential.