Yeah, his idea wasn't entirely serious. But it could be merged with an active ability (10p) that lets Conglutinate also work on Prime. Using this would let Demis/Ascendants conglut, and other people could get a Conglut on Prime. Fades when it fires, so if it works you have to use another 10p to get it back. Essentially, a trans skill that gives you a safer vitae, I guess.

Vitae would fire first, this would fire second, just like how Conglut already works.

Indeed, I can't use half of my trans trade skill, so stop your whining Demis

Hm.

Altars instead of war shrines on Cosmic/Etherseren/Etherglom (Altars activated by say, cr3+). Same powers, more effective. Double wrath damage. Double gravity slow. Make it a toggle, not a timed, large constant power drain while up. Disables if X members of defending org are present on the Plane above level 70 (where x would be something like 8-10).

That or just make Daughters respawn like angels/demons, and make all three of them incredibly hard, killing anyone not in teams of 3-4.

*giggle*

The big fallacy that always dominates this conversation is the one where "no one has to participate" in raids, in defense, etc. This is a particularly pernicious missing-the-point because it leads down the red herring trail of whether you're "obligated by RP" or "pressured by your city/communemates" and all that other stuff.

Yes, no one has to participate in defense or raids. No one has to log into Lusternia at all, and that's just as relevant. But when a fight goes on long enough and becomes repetitive and unresolvable enough, it does so at the expense of everything else. It is now virtually impossible to get anyone to participate in anything besides aetherhunts (soon to be nerfed some more until they too are set aside) and the Forever War. On a good day, Lusternia is about a lot of things, and there's room for everyone's tastes within it, but today, Lusternia is about one, maybe at most two, things, and everything else is driven out because of the constant demands, the wearying, the pressure, the exhaustion, and the grinding pointlessness of it all.

And that's so awful because it can never end. Cue the litany of "players don't have to do anything they don't want to" people insisting we can change our politics and ignore the current war, another red herring. If the gods/admin keep pushing players towards a conflict that has can never be won, and in which doing nothing is unsustainable (because there's a huge reward motivation to break any stalemate), then while a few players or even a lot of players may object that we should stop, there will always be enough who don't agree that this will never end on its own. The players are not a hive mind. We are never going to agree all at once. And it turns out even a single person who's determined enough and happens to have the right skills can completely undo all the actions of even fifty people united in the pursuit of something-else-anything-else-please-god-something-else.

Conflict in a game like Lusternia does not need to be fed, nurtured, encouraged, advocated for, etc. beyond a very basic point. When people complain about its absence, or insist that it's been nerfed, it invariably turns out there's tons of conflict available, but it's a flavor they don't want to settle for, it's against someone they don't feel like fighting, it's over stakes they don't care about. But there is conflict available to them. And at its sparsest, they still have more conflict options to choose from than everyone else has options for everything else. They're just being ridiculously picky whiners.

But there's always conflict available, and there's one simple reason: conflict has a unique ability in Lusternia to be self-sustaining, because it's the only thing you can force on anyone else. No one can force you to roleplay, to get involved in politics, to be part of the economy, to be creative, to interact with people (other than by smashing in their faces), to care about history, to explore places, to make designs, or anything else. But anyone can force you to be involved in conflict any time they like simply by attacking you. Your only alternatives are, to one degree or another, to remove yourself from more and more of what Lusternia has to offer. There's a spectrum of options, from being ready to run, to staying in org territory, to hiding in a manse, to logging off; and every step on that spectrum is you buying some immunity from being able to be forced into conflict at the cost of removing yourself from more and more of what Lusternia has to offer beyond conflict.

It's this asymmetry that means that conflict will by its nature tend to overrun everything else unless it's constantly checked. However, if you only like the conflict, you're likely to just look around and see that the conflict that's there is boring today, and decide that means conflict itself needs to be nourished, and to hell with everything else. It's easy to miss that conflict ultimately is, if not checked, going to drive out everything else. And at least some of the gods, who wield considerable influence and who are backed by the arrangement of mechanics like quest details and rewards, are constantly pushing towards more conflict, and stepping firmly in the way of any effort to rein it in.

It's a mistake to say that the problem is too much raiding. The possibilities for raiding are not a big problem. (Apart from the imbalance of ethereal on its teeter-totter between impregnable and indefensible, against the fact that nothing killed in it returns on its own, but that's a minor issue.) The problem is that the current conflict by its design and by the support of the involved gods cannot ever end. Fix that; dig out of the trash all the things that used to define Lusternia and which were a big part of what made it great, and put them back into place, and the worry about excessive raiding will fade away.

I'm not sure what the things in the trash are. Do you mean if you remove all reasons to raid, people will find other areas of conflict that will balance out?

He's trying to say, "Encourage the roleplay, interaction, focus on books and all the stuff that brings people together, then there won't be an issue with conflict."

I think that has been shown to not be accurate, though. When you have people who are not interested in any of that stuff and only raiding, they raid. When they raid, the people who are interested in that stuff then need to defend... which means they are being forced to play a part of the game they don't like. The issue really is that it's happening repeatedly and excessively to the point where it excludes all else, but trying to focus more on them won't help.

Because the raiding will still be happening.

(That, or he's saying "Go back to the old style of conflict that was not city-vs-commune because when we're fighting Glomdoring we're not getting raided as much," which overlooks that it just means Magnagora/Celest do this to each other instead)

Heh.

To oversimplify, and with all the attendant dangers of oversimplification, tone down (a lot!) the current city-versus-commune quests and concomitant Forever War. If there is going to be a city versus commune thing, make it be about what cities stand for and what communes stand for, so that it is only a factor in the struggle of ideologies, one that has to weigh itself against other ideological points like Taint or freedom or sacrifice, instead of the be-all-end-all that trumps all of those things and causes us to toss them all away.

(Some mechanical tweaks to raids could help too. But it's not about whether it's Narsrim or Krellan who's currently being the NarsrimKrellan, despite what Xenthos and Razenth think. It doesn't matter who is being the childish griefer; what matters is that the circumstance encourages someone to be. It's about whether there's room for anything else.)

Nature. Civilization. Your commune's irrational attachment to the fae and my city's irrational attachment to Raziela. That's how this war started. What is it about now? Making sure you can't hai'Gloh our asses again.

Right now, if we made no other change than who was against whom, Glomdoring would probably hurt Serenwilde far more than MagCelest does, what with Glomdoring being the most powerful force in a lot of ways right now. So that's certainly not my motivation.

I'd prefer it was more about the former two things, and less about the latter. There's far too much indirectness between those two pairings for them to really be ideological points. If it was "nature against civilization" it would be something we'd balance against those other things I talked about. But instead it's about "oh my god they're killing again" and the quests that follow. Where in this does it really matter that one side happens to live in trees and the other build streets? Does anyone even talk about the differences between those viewpoints? It never even comes up. It's not even a pretext, it's just a label on the outside of the manila folder in which the actual stuff is filed.

Okay, I don't want to get side tracked into esoteric discussions. I want to try and get a list of practical ideas that the admin can look over and discuss.



Ladies/Daughters are a nice RP side-effect from doing the ethereal commune power quests. They weren't meant to be super guards or anything similar. If you kill them, nothing bad happens to the commune. They'll slowly reappear as the power quests get done. Angels/demons are also not meant to be super guards. In fact, I've never heard of people having a great deal of trouble killing them. Further, cities lose power when they die. So comparing them is a bit of an apples-oranges comparison. I'm really not sure if ramping up ladies/daughter/angels/demons to the point where you must have teams would solve anything except encouraging stronger raiding parties. (Besides, someone always figures out a way to tank powerful mobs.)

That's pretty debatable. Doesn't change that you still don't see a whole lot of this perma-raiding on Elemental/Cosmic planes, though. We could potentially do more damage in terms of harvesting Avatars and dropping the Flame / Hart, sure... but I still don't think you'd be seeing the amount of raiding that's been going on. You know, the raiding that you term "pointless".

The only way to fix it is to actually look at the mechanics, though, because that could potentially change.

I'm going to jump in swinging.



Firstly, you can not raid the elemental planes. In a literal sense, yes. In the practical sense, no. There is nothing you can do but pick up essence and kill lords who will respawn shortly after with 0 cost to the org you are attacking. The entire argument that "cities have more planes to raid" is not an argument anchored in reality. The people who "raid" elemental planes are people like Narsrim who climb the mountains for hours, and accomplish nothing but killing lowbies.

However, much like ethereal, you show up to defend because you are supposed to. From an RP perspective, they are intruders and you have to defend your land. Please stop making up situations. No one raids etherealglom/seren in a group of 2 or 3 when nothing is around. It's either 1 killing daughters behind greatpent, a bunch killing avatars, or bunch camping trying to get easy kills. This has been true for the past several months.



A lot of people? Man, this mindset is a big problem in lusternia. You are a champion, for one, so supposedly you should be interested in engaging combat. Supposedly. It's not all about "we have to raid, we have to win."

I raid and fight even if the odds are stacked against me all the time, and I do it alone. Why? Because I find challenging PK interesting. The "raids" that have inspired this thread are the type that involve 10+ raiders (most of which are demigods, and I'm sorry estarra, you are wrong here. The ability to divinefire and statistical advantage in health/damage ARE factors) against a force of 3 or 4 defenders, some of which are not regular combatants. The type of "raids" that involve camping for hours and using illusions or other methods to lure the midbie/lowbies away from the competent fighters and crush them in oooh...one or two seconds. The raids that have inspired this thread are raids by people that have no interest in 1v1 pk. They are people who have made a point to give themselves every mechanical advantage so they can show up on deathsight a lot and lol over clans for their l33t pwnage.


Here's the deal. Raiding is an enjoyable part of the game when people use common sense. However, the playerbase that raids and calls themselves top tier is largely incapable of using it as their judgment is usually overshadowed by their ego. That's not to say ALL of them, because obviously not all of them participate in this behavior. When you have nothing to gain and the org you are attacking is literally incapable of repulsing you, that means it's time to go. Stop trying to pick off people with a force of 10 or more. There is no skill involved, their is no victory beyond mashing a damage macro and getting the lucky last shot. Do not abuse pyramids/cubixes/trueheal/divinefire. If it painfully clear you can't kill any of the people that are defending, go away. Do not bounce around, leave long enough to draw power or wait for midnight, then return only to fire/trueheal/cubix away. This annoys me. Veyrzhul, for instance, knows he can not kill me. It just isn't going to happen for various reasons, yet he will return over and over and run away over and over and wast the time of myself and others, knowing full well he can't kill us, and we can't kill him because of trueheal.

People need to use their heads. It's plain and simple. Stop letting your e-peen interfere with your thought process.

Until people can do that consistently, I would suggest accelerated insanity not prevented by circlet/medallion. Romero is incorrect in saying that it will simply be another bragging right. Everyone knows how difficult it is to successfully cure and fight in heavy insanity.

Additionally, what about a progressive defense system. The longer you are in an enemy area, the more the effects of the area start to hurt. Liveforest/ripple/flux stun/entangle more often, do more damage, etc etc. Eventually to the point where they are doing a chunk of health each tic and making staying in the area a chore.


edit: for the record, I am aware I have participated in some of this behavior at some point in time.

It's to the point of people suggesting that harder mobs are put on both planes. Mobs already exist, toughen them up. Believe me, no one actually sees Daughters as bonus roleplay. Believe it.

We're looking for concrete suggestions to consider. Honestly, I understand your frustration with the "Forever War" and see your points, but debating it just leads down the path where nothing gets resolved and people are left with ruffled feathers. So ... how would you tone down (a lot!) the current city-versus-commune quests?

This only works if there are people around to activate the defenses.

Unless, of course, these defenses auto-activate on their own after 10 minutes of raiding (at no power cost). You can use the power to pre-emptively put them up or try to stop an Avatar/DL killing right away, or just wait until they start on their own.

Without that happening though, this won't help much. Just keep timing the raids for when nobody can activate the things.

I'm not qualified to comment on whether raiding is good or bad here, and so I won't. I would like to make a general comment about lusternia though, specifically directed at those statements made, such as "It was thatguy and me defending, out of a total of 8 online. Some people just don't like to fight."

It is my experience in IRE that most people want to fight. The majority of non-coms are not pacifists or people that just detest pvp - they are people that don't know how and don't like to help out because they don't know how and maybe that one time they tried it was a complete failure. They say "no, I don't like pvp," at the same time as being envious of you.
In many ways, Lusternia is the most complex of the IRE games so this bar is even higher.

On the plus side, the complexity (and perhaps chance) has led to several great curing systems being free and/or cheap, and Lusternia has a lot of mechanics (in the skills and the quests) that seem great for raiding. If you're only getting 25% of your online people showing for a group fight, you need to encourage them to come along more. Show people that fighting IS fun, that they can do it. Especially in skirmishes where you don't even need to know all your skills, just a handful of the most effective (op?) ones.

<3 Celina

Incidentally, a discretionary to shut off archways/rifts/cubixes would be swell. Or just make it a super version of distort.

Celina's post is good btw, should read that.