Make it so that one half of XI/HI has to be dominant. I do not think Celest would be so happy to do XI if it ment that Celestia and Water would be tainted for the duration.

So long are there are mechanics that allow for unrestricted raiding, there will be players that will not know the definition of self-restraint and be relentless about it. My complaints, and lack of presence lately on Lusternia, have stemmed from the fact that whenever I log in, I'm constantly defending (and sometimes raiding) and I'd like to do something else for a change. Now, I understand the IC argument that I'm a Champion and that this is what I signed up to do and I understand that. Though, it's something I'd gladly step down from if it meant that I could do something else for a change.

There is a lack of restraint due to the fact that there is nothing, in terms of mechanics, that hinder or prohibit a group from late night raiding. It is an issue that has existed in Imperian and here, so I've discovered. I can't speak for the other IRE's, but I'm pretty sure it exists there too. There is also very little in terms of mechanics that prohibit/penalize/hinder people from relentlessly raiding. Sure, Shrine Effects/Liveforest fade eventually, but we've had situations where people just wait it out and then return to raid again.

As much as I support conflict and believe it to be an intregal part of a MUD or any game for that matter, there are definitely people that take it too far. I confess that I, myself, have been guilty of being undisciplined before. However, it's just become so annoyingly rampant these past few weeks that I know I'm not the only one who doesn't feel like logging in because we really don't feel like defending yet again.

Remove Players Online from the Website. While it is not a "key factor" in raiding I know from experience and conversation that it is used to establish "who is online to defend".

If you can log on a website and tally up your force vs. their force, then you can easily decide "do I/we raid now or not?"

Not to mention it negates the whole purpose of the Gem of Cloaking Artifact.

Nerf Metagamers.

^This is true too.

I think you should look more at providing alternatives to raiding Ethereal/Cosmic. A lot of raiders just want to fight. Neutral territory which can be contested would provide an outlet for this. Domoths work well in some regards, but they're very easy to lock down and because an org can almost always choose when they go up are often ridiculously one-sided and impossible to contest. I really can't think of any other method for cities or communes to oppose one another that does not involve these raids that obligate people to defend. Godrealms pop up occasionally, but often no-one bothers to defend those either.

A neutral competition zone, more frequent than villages and more PK oriented, which provides a minor benefit to the winners but no tangible loss to the losers. Something more inventive than just power, hopefully! Perhaps reintroduce part of the old construct mechanics and have aetherbubbles randomly appear in aetherspace (they shouldn't be too hard to track down - a global message and a generic method of locating them, possibly through an empath's astralsense or similar, as this isn't intended to be a race so much as just combat) which has an autonomous construct in the middle with fairly high HP that you have to beat down, for instance. You win, you can temporarily build another construct for, say, an RL day? Less? You lose, you still have your standard construct; you win, you get another construct for a limited time. People would fight over it, but hopefully wouldn't complain too much if they lost consistently, and it's more accessible and frequent than domoths or villages.

And be very careful when making things more difficult for extended raids. When we pulled off Xion the first time, we were sitting in Etherseren for quite some time (hours, IIRC) trying to make our way to an Avatar, and I think most people would agree this was a 'legitimate' raid.

EDIT: I'm not saying that you shouldn't make it more difficult raids where people are just being annoying. But watch out that you don't stop the actual ones with good intent from happening either.

I think some people are missing the difference between legitimate raiding (supermobs) and just coming in every few hours to see how many people you can get to come and die at your feet.

Seriously, the latter is limited to a few people and the only mechanic needed is the administration deciding that a few players driving away many players is not good business sense and then cracking down on these people.

I, like many others, just don't log in much anymore because I am tired of seeing the same person/people announced on CT every time I do log in.

I hate to say it, since I really do love Lusternia, but I am off playing a mud I haven't played in 7 years, because I can just relax and not have to worry about "the few" there.

I agree with you on that it's not actually raiding, but the few people who do it are the people who they're making the money off of. Usually people at end game, and or with artifacts. I honestly don't see it as a problem, people die because you try and go fight them, sit on the nexus and laugh.

This is a common fallacy, nor a responsible reason for accepting it. The "few people" driving away others creates a loss of income. I.R.E does not make regular money off people who have hit the peak. A few bucks here and there when something shiny comes out, but overall that well has been tapped.

I.R.E does lose potential income every time a player leaves though. Not only that, but every time a player leaves that has a ripple effect and 1 player tends to be a small group of players all of whom were potential income.


However, I dislike the philosophy that players of I.R.E games have of "I pay your bills so you have to do as I want". In truth, the customer is never right.

Sitting at the nexus listening to yell poorly thought-out taunts and seeing complaining mob spam on CT alongside a couple of other org members in a bad mood due to being in the same situation is not the kind of exciting activity many people join this kind of game for.

I'd like to know the stance of the administration, though. Does it value the credit-buyer minority over the regular majority? It would clear up a lot of things, such as why Lusternia's combat style requires(?) a slew of Transcendent skills, not to mention an artifact here and there.

So, so true.

I don't know if you're serious or not, but there's no way they could say something like that.

I had already suggested making it so that the SuperMobs on the side that does it no longer get invulnerability, and lose any invulnerability they may have had... which would also be 'weaker' in a way, as well.

Well, it's not like anyone is trying to engage them in reasonable discussion or anything, it's just worthless background spam like Globglob that isn't really aimed accurately at anything but is still vaguely irritating. It's not the most relevant problem there, I was just outlining the general experience for Gero to make it more obvious how boring that is.



Right (fixed slightly). The nature of PK causing losses that some people care about and others don't is another contributing factor to the frustration of noncombatants not being able to do anything to interrupt the play of the people interrupting them (as Lendren or whoever covered earlier.)

I'm not sure whether you mean to negate my premise or not, but what I'm saying is that there is quite literally no loss or risk involved beyond demigod. It's not that they don't care about the loss, it's that the loss is so tiny they don't have to care. At all.

You're also missing on the "very low risk of dying" for the specific small group of people, since they can choose when to raid and what abilities to spam in order to ensure that they really never die, too.

Even if you up the penalty for a raider, all it's going to really do is affect smaller raiders. The current crop of "screaming raiders" that's being discussed do things like sit in greatPent on monoliths where there's really no risk, and then cubix away when done.

Sojiro's idea of a discretionary that turns off Cubix on Cosmic/Elemental/Ethereal, and further shuts the archways so that only members of their org can get through them, would help turn this around a little bit. This, coupled with shrine distortion, would actually give the raider a fair chance of dying (if the org decides to use that much power/essence for one person, which usually isn't the case).

I'm not trying to negate your premise at all, I'm just trying to qualify it. Vathael, for example, does not have to care about dying, as you say. He has more than enough XP and bashes enough anyway. Random people who die on an Etherwilde raid do not have this luxury or (necessarily) motivation.

Still missing the point. I don't bash. I don't aether hunt. I don't do anything. I still fight. I have no risk of losing demigod. I've been sitting between 3-5m essence for months.

Though the "no cubix" discretionary would need to only work if all Avatars/Supernals/DLs are alive, otherwise it could be used to try and stop people from getting out with the corpses. Hm.

I don't think anyone's suggested that. What the communes really need is once again to remember why they don't care about Ethereal, because every time they do, Ethereal kicks them hard in the teeth and laughs at them. For years there was a nice stable balance: Faethorn was an unfortunate mix of lowbie influence ground and large-scale arena for anyone who felt like fighting without anyone feeling obligated to fight. I remember posting how when we lost that, people wouldn't realize how valuable was that pressure-release-valve until so long after that it wasn't clear that that's what they lost, and it's funny watching that happen. But we're forced to care about Maeve by mechanics now, despite Maeve being indefensible and made out of soggy cardboard.

However, we're not forced to care about our Ladies/Daughters save by roleplay. They're facets of one of our two big Great Spirits, after all. Lisaera often encourages us to defend them and replace them when they're gone (and I'm not saying she shouldn't, but when she does, that's significant pressure). But when you get right down to it, gathering fae for Ladies is an absolutely Sisyphean task. It literally is a matter of an hour invested to get one, and less than a minute to lose it. When you're being relentlessly practical, so what? isn't really hurting us when he does that; he's just wanking off. And the process of getting them back is just getting us power. Nevertheless, it feels like an agonizing torturous grind. Every day someone spends five hours doing the same lowbie-influence game, whether that's the game they want to be doing or not, and the rest of us just have to be harangued because we're not also doing that gruntwork. And every day they get wiped out in a few minutes of completely-unstoppable wankery. The lines in the powerlog don't really make that less frustrating.

So what we really need is for the communes to develop a healthier attitude towards Ladies/Daughters, which is, who gives a crap about them? If we have them, fine, but when they're gone, no big deal. Treat them like the stags and peacocks, for all the difference they make. They really provide us no benefits by being there, so we lose nothing when they're gone. We need to find IC excuses to act that way. That said, I have no idea how to effect that change in attitude.

Failing that, giving them some limited ability to repopulate themselves, or failing that, making it so that wiping them out isn't a trivial exercise for a single person to do with nearly zero risk, would help. But those are less desireable solutions. In neither case is making them more guard-like or invulnerable even on the table.