Yeah. That's the good stuff. Celestine => Monk => Aquamancer => Paladin => Bard => Other Bard => Pyromancer. All tri-trans. Plus transing four different trades.

The only way to keep from losing a truckload of lessons is to switch to a guild with the same or similar archetype (guardian/wiccan, mage/mage, etc), which is problematic when the reason you're unhappy might have to do with the archetype's style.

Aoife's path has been Celestine => Shadowdancer => Aeromancer => Pyromancer. By far the most painful was the switch from wicca to mage archetype, and was partially my own fault. I was sick to death of having pretty much useless tradeskills for the actual "trade" part.

Least painful was Aeromancer => Pyromancer for obvious reasons.

I think I'd be omnitrans pretty easily by now if I hadn't swapped so much.

In Imperian you can keep your classes and switch back and forth, I think, which seems like a nice way of doing it. Still, the forget system is awesome compared to say, Achaea. I tried to forget Tattoos to learn more guild skills when I swapped and you can't do it there.

Switching classes causes one to spend more RL money. I highly, highly, highly doubt the game views this as a bad thing.

I can see the reasoning behind the system of lost lessons. It entices further purchase. And at least for many, it works. Everyone chiming in here obviously spent more credits, most of which comes from purchase. But it seems counterintuitive to have time/money investment poof entirely at a point in a player's game involvement where there's a good chance of them giving up and leaving. People change guilds because they're either forced to (outguilding/outcitizenship), are tired of the current guild/archetype, or need a change of pace.

Do you suppose having the 'lost' lessons become unavailable and then trickled back into availability over time would work out? For impatient sorts, it would still entice them to purchase more credits, so as to retrain up faster. But it also lets the uncertain types know that, at some point, they'll have all their previous might back - which encourages them to stick around and see how it turns out.

Given the concern over both acquiring new players as well as keeping existing players... this would seem to help keep players around longer.

I dunno, just a thought. It's a pretty radical change from the current model, so it seems unlikely to be looked at.

Instead of losing lessons a chunk of them are put in stasis and are trickled back? I really like that idea.

That's actually an interesting suggestion.

Necromancy is the shiz, man.

Actually, I'm just impatient. I need to practice on Tynghall, and I just haven't. I need to realize that switching guilds isn't going to magically make me better at PvP.

I am waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too impatient...

I think that a free reincarnation every year or passive lesson accumulation for playing 10 minutes (like last month) might work well.The bonus is not significant enough that players would stop buying credits. Players will play more because they are less likely to get bored and encouraged to log in more.The more time you spend in the game, the more likely you are to purchase credits.

I don't like the idea of promiscuous players hopping from guild to guild and changing their skills willy-nilly and lost lessons being replenished probably won't fly over well anyways because we're talking potentially big bucks here.

So if you're a long-time player that is dedicated enough to log in at least 10 minutes every day and earn 6 bonus lessons, then you can change your tertiary or trade skill once a year. But if you're just itching to try that new Hallifax warrior guild then you'll have to cough up the cash and take the hit in your wallet unless you want to passively accumulate lessons over 10 years.

What's wrong with that?

Anyway, Eldanien has a very good idea, because there is one HUUUGE difference between Lusternia and... say Achaea. In Lusternia, every single guild is closely tied to their org. If you are not in the org your guild belongs to, there are several abilities that you can't use. In Achaea you could go from being a mage in Shallam, to being a mage in Mhaldor and you wouldn't lose anything. Here, that same switch would force you to at least forget Aquamancy for Geomancy. This is true for every single guild, except Tracker Warriors, and even they are forced to join another organization because they lose their companion.

This means that if someone is ousted from their guild or commune, they'll lose a lot of lessons. Essentially, people in positions of power can "steal" actual money that people have invested to attain Transcendant guild skills by ousting them. So either you have to change commune or guild (changing guild within commune is expensive, and changing commune requires a drastic change in RP, especially for Guardians and Wiccans) or you need to go rogue, which really isn't much of an alternative, due to the many dis-incentives (power, affinity ...) to being rogue.

I'm pretty sure that is the main reason that Achaea got autoclass.

I'm pretty sure autoclass has been decided to be a bad idea, even achaea is going away from it. But that's a topic for a different thread I think--

One of Lusternia's most base features is the close relationship of guild and city, skills included. There is no logic behind a priest who draws upon the holy light and blessings of Celestia utilizing their angel to slaughter the Supernals in the name of the Demon Lords of Nil, for example. Or someone living in the Glomdoring able to call upon the Mother, Maiden and Crone, all fae closely bonded with Moon, while they slaughter the avatars of Moon and Night and feed fae to gorgulu, and whatsuch.

What's that got to do with the price of fish? If you're ousted from your guild and commune you are forced to forget your skills, an aspect Lusternia has that no other IRE game has. Even going from Moondancer to Shadowdancer, a switch that in other games would be costless, requires you here to shell out the difference in lessons lost from forgetting Moon and learning Night. That is why Eldanien's idea of, instead of losing your lesson investment alltogether because someone got trigger happy, you only need to wait a while to have your lessons back. It'll make same to same switches only have a token price (something I consider fair when you don't always want to make this change) while more drastic changes would take far longer, and require you to buy credits if you want to get into fighting gear anytime soon.

To be fair you have to be a total tool (Asmoth) or do something like steal to be ousted from your org. (unless you're in Celest)

This also has nothing to do with the price of fish, primarily because the status quo of supposed non-Celest attitudes toward being kicked out of an organization will not always be so - and I'm pretty sure your assessment of the other five organizations isn't quite as accurate as you may think.

Well, you did just defeat your argument. But consider this.

I'm a Shofangi. Go Keph, boo Illithoids and all that. Now think that Shiri (GA) finds me standing at the aetherplex, chatting with a Nekotai. Shiri already doesn't like me because I'm a filthy american. And, being the meticulous british-man that he is, he knows that I'm technically breaking the laws of the guild. No one really knows who I am, so in a flash of power, I'm ousted from guild, cuz I'm a filthy traitor, (and commune, cuz Shiri said I'm a filthy traitor). Even changing to Celest, which maybe I don't want cuz I don't like water, I'm still forced to forget Shofangi and learn Tahtetso instead. If I join any other guild, and I will have to forget at least another set of lessons. This is essentially a loss of actual money through no real fault of my own.

Sorry to Shiri for being used in the example, but you're the most famous leader the guild has.

That's really not so common, though I do think it's a bit of a bum deal. I'm thinking more of the who-knows-how-many people who looked at their character, looked at where they wanted to be, and decided it wasn't worth the cost.

I want Lusternia to make money. I want them to make more money, hire more coders/admins, and generally create a better game. I'm just curious if it might be done by reassuring players that their money investment won't poof on them because they chose to try something different.

I guess, in my mind, money spent on the game should result in a more-or-less permanent benefit to your character. It would be difficult to run out of things to buy, after all. And for many, there are multiple characters to spend on.

A bored player has two choices: spend money to try out a different skill/guild/org/artifact/whatever, or leave the game. Some do choose to spend the money. How does that balance out against those who left?

Short term, I'd expect the immediate money spenders to have a larger impact. Long term, players that would have left but didn't may bring in more players, and both of those have the potential to buy credits in the future.

I'm just musing out loud at this point. But taking a step back, it seems odd to effectively require money for a player to continue playing the game but in a different way. At least, without losing a chunk of their character's potency.

We should probably split this off if we're going to continue to discuss it. Autoclass is definitely a terrible idea, though, so keep that in mind.

Ladies and gentlemen, what you see here is a very smart person. I think I actually cracked a smile reading all the things you've had to say on this topic, and I support your idea completely. You have a lot of good thoughts about how things work and your reasoning is solid.

Now if only I was someone who meant anything...Haha, I just wanted to let you know how I felt.