Removal of those 8 new guilds. Open a neutral org. Make 4 new guilds for that org. Make people happy.

That being said, races and/or fixing afflictions, because the afflictions in Lusternia are amazingly complex. More so than any other IRE game.

I don't think anyone has to be any race at all. Nothing is stopping him from changing out to become a Tae'dae with CHA if he wanted. Besides, Illithoid and Viscanti did also get their ++village boost to bring them on par with the average influencers of the Basin while still retaining their other buffs, so I don't think either need more CHA at all.

You know, I hate the idea of doing it, but the monk guilds all seem to be so small, maybe we should end the class, merge the current monks into the warriors, let them keep the class as long as they keep it, and close those guilds...

I think the Cantors are the only bard guild that phasing out could work in, but I could be wrong.

But as I think about it, and others seem to be echoing the idea here, a lot of people would rather have a new city/commune then the bard/monk guilds.

Only because a new city/cmmune is new and shiny, while a bard/monk is old and not so shiny.

The idea of an extra community because 1 guild is small is just counter productive.

I wonder what fusing monks and bards would create.

Mords

Banks.

Chuko "Sleeping Dragon" Liang.

Someone either guessed well or knows a little chinese!

Mord-Sith?

Making monks a subtype of warriors is a great idea. Monk guilds have little point to exist, RP-wise, and fitting what they do have into that greater context would go a long way towards solving that problem. Nekotai would be a Scorpion-worshipping sect within the Ebonguard, etc.

If monks got deleted, you'd better hope we get to keep all of our lessons with no loss.

Selfish: Family system. Family stuff has been a significant reason why I still play/care, and has been for a couple years now. I'd really, really like to see rewards/benefits for INFAMOUS activities, essentially the flip side of the coin. Why should we be punished mechanically for enjoying a lovingly cruel, Magnagoran-minded family?

Selfless:
1) Domoths/Ascendant(cy/s): I've said since day one that too many demigods/ascendants will be a self-oiling cog in the engine of downfall for Lusternia as a whole. We have over 60 demigods/ascendants now, and as the power gaining stands now, the communes are generating ascendants at an alarming rate thereby furthering the imbalance. The massive amount of them makes combat nigh impossible to balance. I don't think I have to explain this as I'm sure some of you could write your own essays on this topic, and frankly speaking, the imbalances should be quite obvious. I suspect at some point combat will be balanced around demigods/ascendants, whereby everyone else can just settle to fail at life.

2) Forging: it sucks. The upside of fixing it properly is the mutual glee of the playerbase. Even if it waters down the benefit of taking the forging skill, I doubt many forgers would mind if it meant saving them 10000 hours of forging in their lifetime. The downside I see at first glance is that monks/warriors would likely need a massive overhaul to re-balance them. Given the efforts to do this in the past, I suspect it will not be well received unless perfect for everyone (laugh.)

In any event, thanks for this thread Estarra.

I voted forging because I've seen someone go insane® forging. I could see their minds breaking into tiny bits.

Joking aside, forging needs that overhaul. Bad. I'd like to say, though, that I'm wondering whether it would be possible for 1) the parents need not be in the same room to CONSIDER, and getting a long period during which they can REJECT the child, after which the normal CONSIDER period could start or something. 2) I'd like to see already confirmed siblings be allowed to BLOODBOND into an existing offshoot of the parent family. For a very, very specific instance of where this could be applicable, FAMILY TREE TYRNI sometime. 3) I think after a certain period of time, an engagement should automatically be broken if the couple hasn't married by then. Like, 500 IG months or something. It's a long time, sure, buy I know I've seen engagements longer that need to end, one way or another.

(Haven't read through any of the posts)

Really, for me, the interest to Lusternia was lost when more and more of the big changes and releases came. It seems to me with each new mechanic, it just seems to be less and less likely for the older things to be fixed. We had new archetypes and guild in the bards, which were said to be overpowered at first, but then even they were overshadowed by the release of monks. We have had what, two or three monk overhauls already, and yet we are still waiting (for who knows how long) for the next "fix".

Then you have new mechanical conflict systems. A few come to mind here. Firstly is of course the nexus world battle system. We went through a few fixes at first and it seemed to be fun the first or second time. Then, it was found to be impossible to actually achieve anything in one of these and these battles were not even done for a few months at least. And now, eventually, this system has been scrapped altogether.

Second, domoths. These were fun for a while, but pretty soon, they were found to be too beneficial for whoever held them. This didn't pose as much of a problem when Thoros and co were still around (and there is no point in denying that in this game one or a few key people can actually influence the entire balance of power) as the benefits were shared between both sides, to a degree. Then, more and more people began to leave the game from Magnagora, partly because they stood no chance against both Celest and Serenwilde. Domoths were pretty much a Serenwilde only thing after that and it was not until recently with the shuffling of alliances that things have changed slightly.

Third, Order wars on God Realms. How many of these have we had? How long has it been since they were released? Isn't this quite telling of what the general consensus with them is?

Fourth, the general introduction of more and more ways for one or more orgs to beat down on other orgs. "Oh no, but we want them" says a few people on the forums. But honestly, I think this is mostly coming from the people whose characters are from the winning side. I don't think I really need to name any names here, but what about all the people on the losing side? Unfortunately, in Lusternia, being on the losing side means you are on the losing side for a long time and most would probably give up before the time the balance of power shifts again. What about the people who have already left the game out of frustration? What about all the people who enjoy Lusternia, but do not have the time or wealth to spend in the game as much as others do, whose voices may not be heard on the forums?

So, from the point of view of someone who used to be what you could call an addict, what Lusternia needs is to go back over the last couple of years and reconsider whether or not new releases have actually been beneficial for the game as a whole and whether or not the time invested in these releases could have been used to fix up other things (forging and aetherspace come to mind). This is a personal view, but I think while many of the smaller changes have been great for Lusternia, in general, the big changes have just spoilt what was and could still be a great game.

Trivia tidbit--

Longest engagement still pending marriage: 1488 months.

Edit @Rika: Yeah we held domoths consistently for a while too, but that required all of us to be around constantly, something that just can't hold up long. In conjunction with that, other orgs got more demis/ascendants which effectively put the nails in the coffin.

Yes, let's all (release/delete) this (org/class), because Lusternia definitely needs (more|less) stuff like this instead of fixing current mechanics. Certainly Estarra can cough it out by the end of June.

Fix forging, it helps a lot more things than you'd imagine, not just a group of afkers.

Illithoid don't suck. I'm fine with fixing mugs/merians/faeling though.

The delete/release talk is an expansion on ideas, forging is going to be fixed in June... it does not mean we can not discuss other things.

No, the delete/release thing comes up in every discussion thread, at least the ones made by admin. I highly doubt it will come any time soon and it's about as predictable as someone saying 'it's (org)' during any event.

As far as every conflict system goes:

-I still disagree that nexus worlds were fatally flawed. A few ideas to balance them were brought up in the last thread, and I was kind of hoping that it'd be adjusted then tried again before scrapping it.

-Domoths, likewise, are fine as a mechanic, they just need to reduce/stop giving power and they will be fine. Of course they favor the strong, but that's the point, isn't it? The only way you can discourage that is if the rewards demanded/favoured more individual action.

-Order wars are pretty meh, but I believe that's more on the gods than anything. It seems many of our current gods just disappeared, so orderwars stopped. Strong orders challenging weak orders is another, unrelated story.

-Mechanics that punish the loser is more important in conflict. While it'd be nice if each side was equally strong, it's not, and while it'd be nice if each org fought for itself, they won't, short of big, big changes. Of course hai'gloh, etc, etc, needs some changing, but what doesn't? People will quit out of frustration, you can't please everybody.

It might be best to take it to another thread.