I'm curious why you start a thread asking how to get new people but (and remember, I am someone who is relatively new to Lusty) don't seem inclined to listen to the reasons people are raising about why it's hard to retain new players.

I stand by my point: Lusty, more than any other IRE game, is about the haves and have-nots. Coming back, it's cost me over 100k to get re-equipped, and that's with my own skills, rift, etc supplementing things. I'm still not fully set up. Add in the fact that demi/VA is pretty much a pre-requisite for being on-par with most of the fighters, weapons can cost 100k gold alone, there are double the skills to trans than any other IRE, and you have a very large gap between new people starting out and established players.

The point about the economy was somewhat of a tangent. However, regarding it: the more individuals gather personal stockpiles, the more it's going to take to make them move. The more resources you have, the more profit it will take to make tradeskills worth your time. The same with cities - the more resources a city has, the higher the benefits will have to be to have conflicts be worthwhile (otherwise they are perceived simply as "griefing" - a hot issue lately - or simply a "task" that has to be done).

I sense that people are on tenterhooks when it comes to discussing these issues, so I want to tread carefully. Anyway, I am quite open to ideas to attract more players! However, it is unhelpful to let conversations devolve into "there's no small solution" insofar that ideas presented call for sweeping changes to delete guilds or organizations, or "balance combat" (which is a dynamic ongoing process and frankly subjective depending on who raises them), or memes of that sort.

I am aware that combat in Lusternia is complex. That's one of the reasons we are extremely reluctant to add new afflictions (rather, we'd like to reduce the number where we can). I think the "you have to be a demigod/ascendant" canard is untrue (someone who is skilled at level 80 can take out a demigod or ascendant); however, that said, if the powers afforded demis and ascendants are too imbalancing, we’re certainly open to addressing that (as we have before).

So, yes, we want to grow! Yes, I’m willing to listen to ideas. But incremental or modest ideas for change are more likely to get heard than ideas that are over-the-top or long discourses without solutions.

Yes I agree, I was actually just on Achaea right now listening to someone talk about Dragon there and from the sound of it, it is much stronger there than it is here and they appear to have a lot more endgamers than we do.

You have to be demi/ascendant to survive group combat for any length of time, and that is what Lusternia is. Group combat. Without the high health and extra con, you mechanically can't keep up with the damage a lot of players are capable of putting out.

Plus the second chance divinefire doesn't hurt.

edit: especially since warrior damage doesn't scale

Aren't demiGODs and ASCENDants supposed to be extremely powerful in the first place? After all, they are on the verge of divinity. Nerfing them so that more non-demigods could easily defeat them one-on-one would be awfully silly in my view. It SHOULD take a small group to accomplish such a task, considering said person spent hundreds of hours (or one million power from their nexus) to achieve such. It's completely pointless to have that all go to moot just because a couple people are whining about balance.

RP-wise that sounds great but from a mechanical point it won't work, too many Demigods and Ascendants. If a small group was needed to take one down then each org would have times where they could grab all of their demi's and ascendants and pretty much raze the basin if they wanted to.

I'm not entirely sure how demi/ascendants are here, but dragon isn't very good. I'm also not sure of who you talked with, but it's a pretty safe bet that they didn't know what they're talking about, since I'd trust less than 10 to give good information. Basically, demi-god and ascendants here one-up dragonclass solely because you get the bonuses of those forms while still retaining your normal class.

That may have held true back when you got the dragon stats + your regular class, but ever since they gave dragon it's own class, they kind of suck. Most of the worthwhile dragons over there never use it 1 on 1 unless they're using it to kill someone that's like, level 60. And to give you an outlook of 'worthwhile', there are ~100 active dragons in Achaea. 7 are competent. Out of those 7, only 1 fights 1 on 1 consistently in dform, because his normal class is god-awful in that area.

Demigods can always gain more of a RP standing than a combat standing. In terms of RP, I always used the fact that Rika is a demigod to explain how she could perform some feats (such as have her eyes glow). The prospect of having a character that was more powerful (and not in a combat way) or mysterious than other characters was the driving factor for me (but Nejii had something to do with it too).

I don't know if I am the only one who thinks this, but I would be happy to give away all my stat/regen buffs in exchange for more RP mechanical tools. I know this is what makes being an actual Divine cool, but I am sure there is some common ground out there. I have always been in the "demigods should be buffed" party, but that is only because without combat buffs, demigods really don't have much else going for them.

Nah. But being an to everyone is. When MY friends start complaining about someone, whooooie. We are some of the mellowest people out there.

Also, regarding Mags being married to gloms, see D'murani.

Anywho, what brought me into Lusternia? I felt welcome. To often do you join a game and either get told you're dirt, or you're immediately killed. I found the fact that not only was the game immersive and interesting, but full of nice people to drag me in long enough for the actual gameplay to hook me.

Unfortunately, bad things happened, game got boring and repetetive, rich got richer, poor got poorer, people moaning on the forums and in reports, QQ moar, lolface, ectetera. In otherwords, if you want to enjoy the game, stay the away from the forums.

I'd be fine with that ... but there's always blank looks when we then ask people what "RP mechanical tools" they'd want in place. Offer ideas, young demigod!

Demi is +2 to stats and like level 1 regen on prime I believe? It has been toned down a lot from how it was when I first got it. As many people have said, Demigod doesn't make you a superb combatant. The only Demigod that actually worries(worried?) me in fights is Ceren so, good thing he's on my side again. At any rate, I wanted to hear what other people thoughts were on what is causing novices to stick around. The only thing I've heard so far was commodities. I can't say for sure what I think is the issue since I never really had a problem with sticking with it. As was mentioned earlier by someone, I believe the complexity of the game is likely one source of the problem. I think one reason the other IRE's are much more popular than here is because the game mechanics are much more easier to understand and straightforward. I hardly think it's the people because people in Aetolia also acted like elitists. I think toning down the complexity would be classified as one of those "sweeping changes" that we do not want but I think a start would be the number of afflictions could use toned down, or at least not pushed forward any more than it already has been.

I think there was an idea for an "essence shop" that Demigods could use their gained essence to buying RP mechanical things to their Demigod. It would actually give Demigods something to work toward, the only reason I have bashed up 195 million essence was for a new honours line, so now what?

Emotes without using our names first!

I think there have been entire threads dedicated to ideas for demigod flavor. The most popular being a demigod shop of sorts where you could spend your essence for unique entrances, ambiance messages, area wide emotes, etc etc.

Essence . I hate bashing, and now I can't bash worth a damn with a symbol. Buff my symbol for bashing please.

Already has been.

Just FYI, in comparison to Imperian and Aetolia at least, we really are just as popular (sometimes more so, depending on the time of year, and the mood of butterflies in South Africa). I'm not sure why people think we are somehow at the bottom of the heap! Our playerbase has been stable and steady for years, though of course there are ups and downs.

Anyway, that's not to say I'd love to see us grow!

Stable, yes, that was one thing I mentioned in the very first post how all that is here are the same old faces that have always been here, pretty much. And if it's a new face then it's probably just an alt from an old player which doesn't really bring expansion.

I don't recall the idea for an "essence shop". What would demis/ascendants want in it? Also what powers do people think are making demigods overly powerful that needs to be axed or toned down?

If you say, "tone down the complexity" of combat, we'll look at you blankly. If you say, get rid of the ailments of X,Y,Z and replace them with existing ailments A,B,C, then we may rub our chins and think: hmm, that's doable.