Here's a link to the essence shop idea.

Reading that link makes me want that shop all over again even more.

Same.

Notice who has the very last post of that thread.

One thing I felt that has fallen by the wayside in Lusternia is feeling welcomed as a novice. I know most people don't return due to the fact they don't feel welcomed, or wanted. Truthfully, there's not a whole lot of interaction between newbies and their commune/guilds. You don't see a whole lot of events going on, and I'm not talking about the giant world encompassing events. Guild/commune events. How many guilds hold rituals, not the ones required for advancement, but for the sake of RP and bringing the guild together? So far, from my experience not many. I haven't seen Blacktalon do anything to bring the guild together, or hear a higher rank look at it, see a nov or two or three, and say "hey, have you been taught about the Black nest, and the Aspects? No? Well then let's go."

I think the majority of the problems lay within the player base and not with the admin side of things. The PLAYERS need to get off their asses and start doing things, like oh... actually interacting with one another on a more active bases. Truthfully, things just seem really dead to me. Either your fighting, or your standing around pitter patting.

Also bringing the combat req. might help throw some new blood into the system. One req. I have a problem with is the fact you -have to have a system-. there is no ifs ands or buts about it. I'm sure several fighters have made their way up to t the top without one (I think?) but almost all of them today have one. I'm retarded at doing anything like that, and yea you can say go get treant or whatever, well I'm retarded at setting up MUSHclient and all that stuff too. I use nexus/ire client because I don't have to set anything up, and it is not confusing to use. Personally all I want from combat is the ability to go into a fight with my fellow communemates and not die right off the bat because I didn't have a system to cure me. But the problem with that is combat to fast paced for me to manually heal. So either way I am screwed. But that's my personal problem.

Everyone who has been elected as GM, or GA, has said "I'm going to do such to bring us together" and yet most of them don't do. (note that most of the people are also active combatants). I honestly think we won't get togetherness in the BT until we get a noncombatant GM (or GA).

The thing that really triggered this was the introduction of collegiums. They were introduced because some novices were getting ignored, especially in off-peak times and no one would be around to teach them. However, without something mechanical like that, it really encouraged more experienced members to have personal interaction with these novices. It's really a damned if you do, damned if you don't thing. Teaching novices is by no means an easy task, especially when you do it so much it does feel like a chore. It's especially bad when you spend an hour teaching a novice and then never see them again. Why waste hours of your time when you can just direct them to the collegium?

Re: Combat systems, there really isn't a workaround that. The IRE combat systems is made to be complicated and a system is really the only way to go about it.

I personally don't believe it has anything to do with whether or not you're a combatant. It has to due with the person's willingness to actually -do- something. But truthfully it isn't just the GM/GA. And Nyir has been pretty good to me so far when it comes to giving me a poke and saying 'hey want to come with?' imho I liked it when glom was smaller. it meant that the commune/guilds were tighter-knit and had more interaction. NOVICE STEW <3

Yes I know. I also can understand the teaching feeling, seeing as I have done it before. It is a matter of balance. Quick and easy, yet enough information to understand some things. You don't want to dump knowledge onto them all at once, nor do you want to give them bare bones. It also goes beyond the teaching. I mean, from a day to day basis I rarely if ever talked to a fellow commune/guildmate. I did my own thing, pitter patting around newtons/collegium. Which is all fine and well cuz you're suppose to be there learning how to play and such. I would like to see more like novice quizzes (wtf are they?!), which could be on CGT, GNT or even NEWBIE. (zomg I <3 quizzes) I always found those to be loads of fun because you got people interacting with each other, even if it was over an aether. Also a good way to learn new things. There are more things that can be done to make someone feel welcomed and that feel isn't just needed at the beginning when you've just stepped out of the portal but more or less throughout your whole novicehood time. If you don't feel that you're welcomed in the place, either you leave the game or you leave the place. 9/10 people don't get the welcome feeling from being in the game because of little to no interaction.

As I said, imho it is more on the shoulders of the players to make this game more interesting and keep it "fresh" so to speak not the admins.

As much as I'd like to see some sweeping over-the-top changes (such as a return to the 5 original archetypes), I know they won't happen. As such, I think one of the best things Lusternia could do is just stop adding new mechanics. Focus more on events that don't lead to permanent change (Example: massive m-pos in Skarch for the Dracnari/lucidian war, culminating in an unscheduled finding of the Hand leading to the appearance of energy nodes at each city which then boom as usual. Example 2: make Mt. Zoaka erupt! But then the pyromancers move the lava out of the way so everything is ok in the end. Main point: No absolutely permanent results from either event.) I've got plenty more ideas somewhere in my mind. Is there someone I could talk with to hash out ideas?

I'd also like to see the Gods active more. Elostian's actually talked on OT for 2 consecutive nights now, so that's pretty cool, but Gods in general don't do that *poof* appearance at the nexus the way I remember Terentia doing in Celest on occasion, and holding council with inquisitive members of the populace. Those were cool. I think with less emphasis on releasing new things, the Gods will have more time for roleplaying with the players. *hum*

Your sig-thing makes me cry. Gero's influence is everywhere, it seems.


In a similar vein to last part of this, I think it'd be cool if all times in Lusternia were doubled. That is to say, double all sip balance times, double all balance/eq reqs, double time to make a meld..... slow everything down by a factor of 2. Except movement and SAY and EMOTE and small stuff like that... but yeah, give us some time to think (or systems to catch up ._.)

But yeah, I just finished subjecting poor Xiel to a massive rant about how all anyone ever cares about now is who can raise the most VA's or get the most villages, or whatnot. The playerbase has become incredibly materialistic, and I feel that a lot of the culture/atmosphere of the world is fading. We don't need more mechanics to 'facilitate' RP or culture or anything, we just need a break from new releases to let things settle down so that we get bored and start doing things on our own (or... quitting because nobody else wants to play along).

On that note: WTB Roleplay partner.

EDIT: How does one go about requesting mini-event-type things? I know they can be done 'cause Elostian did a spontaneous discussion on the merits of smithing materials with me once, and I got a unique necklace from it (super-freaking-awesome mini-event, by the way). One thing I don't like about Lusternia is that the help system is so bogged up with random crap and a million and a half things are out of date, leading to opacity in the system, thus blocking access to tools that would lead to more player-driven eventy stuff.

Moar EDIT: Yeah, on further reflection, Lusternia just needs to stop releasing new stuff for a while. This includes areas. I remember that for the first 2 or 3 years of my playing, very little new stuff was released, if ever. Changes were mostly about tweaking existing stuff, there were hardly any huge sweeping changes like with monks and bards, and things were overall a lot more chill. Even the Forever War wasn't nearly as bad as it is now, but I think players back then had more restraint and didn't lolendlessraid for hours on end.

My god, I'm turning into a Lusternia oldie.

I never said Nyir did a bad job (while I will always think she make a better GC). She (or Crek) don't seem to be doing anything big in terms of guild togetherness. While this is hard to do with people that hate RP and the people that hate PvP, I think there could be some middle ground (perhaps make two big events for each group.)

As for a whole attraction: I do think the small guilds/orgs do think they work better in terms of interactivity between people. That said, As Lusternia gets more people, this becomes less and less possible. Novices staying is general not that hard in the short run (they want to see what they can do and level and such) but in the long run: you are going to lose the ones who want to be combatants because of so much that needs to be invested and the credits. (While the admins say this is not a need, it becomes a need when everyone who is big into PvP has the thousands of credits of combat artifacts).

At a point PvE becomes not worth it (at least to me, gaining <.5 for something (be it influencing or bashing is just not worth spending the hours upon hours). I hate losing experience, this is one of the many reasons I don't PvP, and the fact I do 'low level' PvE.

basically...this..

1- Stop ignoring novices and work to bring them directly into the roleplay.

2- let them know that their main thing right now is to learn how Lusternia works
and about Lusternia as a whole

3- Don't make them feel like they MUST rush through advancement

4- Don't make them feel pushed into combat. (it's all well and good to help them with learning about it, but my gods, I've seen newbies pushed into defending territories, which really drives them away when they're just being slaughtered over and over again.)


5- If you want to retain people, stop worrying about spending so much damn time making tons of new crap and make the old stuff better. Also, I concur with mini-events. The toy wars was a LOT of fun and everyone was able to get involved in it, even the young!

Being one of the "newbies" or "new faces," I have to say that it's the accessibility of the veterans that have managed to keep me around. I was initially attracted to the RP and combat, and having tried both Achaea and Imperian in the past, I wanted to retry Lusternia. I don't think I can point to actually what kept me playing, except for self impetus to become better. I can still recall dying to Vathael a few times back in my web-whoring days (nothing much has changed, except I don't use web), and it's been acquiring a list of goals.

That being said, I think player retention lies in giving truly new players a purpose to stay. You will always have the idiots and the mud-noobs, but I'll take either one if they're motivated and can be corrected. In my experience with other games and player retention, mechanics can only go so far in either direction. If, however, a newbie is willing to learn and fight complicated mechanics, then it's the player-base's job to help them learn it.

Whenever I can, I try to make new players feel welcome, including those that are idiots. I don't force myself on them, but I try not to ignore them either.


That being said, I think what should be addressed mechanically-wise is the midbie range. Lusternia is overly complex and more often than not, the new-faces (excluding the one-time log in people) leave after hitting the midbie levels. It's at this time that they lose game-driven goals, and they being new to the game, aren't ready to survive on their own. Combat has already been discussed in addressing the learning curve, but overall, Lusternia has a huge one elsewhere as well.

In regards to combat, I can think of one idea. Being a Guild Wars retiree, one of the best implementations that they had was the random arenas. It of course was farmed by the experienced players, but mechanically, it was an even playing field. Lusternia has nothing of an even-playing field to my knowledge. In the future, I wouldn't mind seeing an arena dedicated to an even-playing field, one that's not very complex. GW has one random arena called the Dragon Arena. It's 8vs8 dodgeball where the concept is quite simple: get twenty kills first. Using this as an example, a new-combat oriented mechanic could be implemented based solely on simplicity and accessibility.

Whatever this mechanic is, it should have the following:
-set skills/commands that are NOT dependent on the individual. No lessons spent, no artifact-bonues.
- less than 10 skills, more than 3. 5 to 8 would be ideal, because this introduces room for strategy without overwhelming players.
-set stats with no artifact bonuses, etc.
-low time commitment, both to initial learning and actual playing.
-simple goals
-no personal consequences, including loss of xp. Gold entrance fee could be an exception.
-important, regular events. The rewards to the organization should be relatively small, but consequential enough to encourage participation. The key balance to this point is that the org SHOULD NOT FEEL OBLIGATED to have their demigods, CR5+, etc. do it. One could extend this to some guild vs. guild challenges, team vs team, and, dare I say it? college vs college.


An arena/such as this could allow every non-combatant to enjoy pvp without a huge investment.



RP wise, I don't have much time to address, but my two top areas I would love to see addressed would be racial RP (not sure how atm) and omotes, as per previously suggested.

You must really have a selective memory, then! We definitely released areas and other things in our first 2 to 3 years (including whole new features, skillsets and specializations). And there were HUGE complaints regarding conflict back then too. The past always looks nicer through rose coloured glasses!

Anyway, as much as people keep saying they don't want "new things", there would be even more complaints of "stagnation" and "nothing happening" if we hadn't been releasing things! Even so, we probably will continue releasing "new things" and I don't think it's fair to say "fix what we have" first without telling us what needs fixing!

Haha, I still remember when Sham posted the thread about nothing happening right before everything went to Nil.

They're not saying "don't release new things" they're saying "Fix up the stuff we already HAVE and THEN release new things."(See: HG/XI that Xenthos posted up). It seems like you guys just release something and then spend maybe 2-3 days/weeks taking criticisms on it before you release a new mechanic which can result in confusion among players new and old. So fix the stuff that's here (again, HG/XI) and THEN give us the shiny stuff.

This is another thing worth noting. People logging off in the first fifteen minutes is probably unavoidable, with reasons ranging from "OMG no grafikz?" to "why aren't the mobs in the mudschool dropping eq?" to "uh, so, now what?" If you can get 15 minutes, you can probably get that same person to level 40, when the instalevel train grinds to a halt. You drop a lot more actual potential players here, when the game should be opening up to them, but it's really not. Ayisdra's harping on combat (which is true), but people are also locked out of village influence, have little reason to do commodity quests, don't yet have social circles to get involved in a ministry, don't yet have the grounding in the world necessary to contribute to culture scores, probably don't know what aetherspace is, probably don't understand planar structure, and are about to get shoehorned into more bashing...and frankly, the PvE around here is still pretty horrible.

Make Great Pentagram drop on any aggressive action by the person holding the Great Pentagram. *rubs your chin for you*

Does not make the game accessible. Go cry to an envoy.

HG/XI is working as intended as far as I know! Just because some people say something is "broken" doesn't necessarily mean it is broken and needs fixing.

Actually it does make people throw up their hands in despair and leave in frustration, like many other skills out there. I could have sworn this thread was about keeping people here. Maybe I am wrong. Since the comment came up about combat, more than once. I responded. Maybe you are in the wrong thread.