First paragraph irrelevant, antagonistic and not constructive - removed.

- Fain

Streamlining combat isn't about boiling the game down to figuring out who should get a PhD in computer programming. It's about encouraging more people to fight. You don't have to be the 1v1 champ to be part of Lusternia combat. Honestly, it just comes down to involving everyone in commune/city/planar defense without having massive lolgank squads a la Achaean style.

Also cut this one.

Let's face it. Not everyone who plays Lusternia loves to fight. Some people just love to bash, while others love to ar-pee. On the other end of the spectrum, there are those who meticulously plot out every action, and spend hundreds of hundreds of hours (or credits) acquiring a system.

Programming systems is a whole different issue. To Iasmos/Larkin's credit, he is probably one of the reasons why more people are getting involved in combat. Treant is a free system that you have to pay for support. Flaws? Most definitely. But who cares? At least you're involved in combat.

I like the flavor text that comes from your bones breaking. I'm pretty sure if I break a bone in real life, I don't have a giant "YOUR RIGHT LEG JUST GOT PWNT" sign that springs up over my body. Treant is good enough for entry-level combat. If you want to get better (and get a better system), take the time to collect the lines. Take the time to figure out what cures what. Just like in real life, you shouldn't earn a black belt overnight.

Biggest barriers to combat:
- Lessons. Yes, IRE will never reduce the amount of lessons needed because it is a business after all. But in Lusternia, you pretty much need multiple trans skills to even survive in combat. I'm not saying that you shouldn't earn money...however, you simply cannot experience combat where it's at until you -buy- credits in the first place (if you're new to IRE muds), and yet you don't know if the game is worth your money. I feel that the essential combat skills should come earlier in every skill, and make trans skills not weigh in as much in combat. Make trans skills be "perks" that give you an advantage, but aren't essential.
- Cost of curatives. Herbs and vials and scrolls are expensive! Maybe a myrtle leaf is 7 gold, and a sparkleberry is 40. Health refills are 120 each. However, if you sum it all together, the cost is quite prohibitive. It's expensive to engage in PvP, and as such, many people will view it as a gold sink.
- Loss of exp. When you die, you can lose hours, even days of bashing. Pretty self-explanatory. Big turnoff to new players who spent ALL that time bashing, only to see all that hard-earned experience just drain away.
- Inflated credit market. Yes, when you hit demigod you can make billions and billions of gold. What about the newcomer? Not everyone wants to drop hundreds of dollars on a game they don't know if they'll like. This feeds right back to point number 1 regarding lessons.

P.S. Why does obliviousness cost mana? It works the same as gagging multiple lines. There is almost no combat advantage for having it on for someone who has a client, but the mana drain basically insures that it won't be used that much.

I am using my iPhone on a train and in no position to moderate. However let me put you on notice that when I next get to a computer I will go through this thread, raising warnings, deleting posts and cracking heads. If you have posted something unwise, now is your opportunity to correct it.

Ahem clearly you don't know who I am, so maybe ask around. Either way, I build my own systems, develop my own logic and i've made easily 2000 credits from selling my system a couple of years ago on lusternia. The total number of credits i've gained from my systems is around 4000 if you count every incarnation of it. Your comments clearly should be directed elsewhere, as I am more than capable of building a system from scratch that cures, parries and stances perfectly, and detects what abilities your character has to aid curing. Autopipe, potionlists, keylists, the lot. The time to do this I've found is about 2 weeks if you include playtesting, and beta testing (handing the system out to friends ot get them to test their :censor:)

Lessons curatives xp and the credit market are NOT barriers to combat. for new players, they are goals to work towards. If you buy credits, (ie with RL money like many of us have) these are not barriers. Even cost of curatives isn't a problem, sell 5 credits to the inflated credit market, and there's your gold for curatives right there.

Players that 'barriers to combat' refers to, are assumed in this case to be those with trans skills (trans guild skills with a couple of the common skillsets transed too) as the saying goes 'combat is balanced at omnitrans'. If you pay more money, your chraracter will be better. Your personal skill goes a long way toward these goals. A system in this game will not keep you alive, I guarantee the most PERFECT system will not keep you alive against a well executed offence if you do not hinder or try to complete kill conditions yourself. The closest you can get is a 'smart' parry/stancing system against a knight. Eventually you'll be able to outsmart it, but it's the closest thing you can get. You could theoretically take a tanky race, and make your offence spam shield slam on every balance, then you will pretty much live forever if you have decent hp and it's 1v1. You'll find, those who love to fight, also spend hours perfecting their system, recoding and rebuilding things that let them down in the field. It is the medieval equivilent to spending your time in training making sure your shield parrying is improved, or developing a better stance. Its the same thing. There are very few top tier (and I mean GOOD, the sort of players that most others wouldn't even fight 2v1, and the very text 'murphy enters the room' causes their heart rate to rise and their adrenal cortex to release cortisol) fighters who do not have a complete and intimiate understanding of their system. I know for sure I used to rebuild my system every couple of months, and redo things to make them more efficient or fix problems other players would send me.

My point remains, coding a system to CURE for you is hard enough, most people don't want to do it or can't invest that amount of time into making a system, so they get a basic free one, or they pay 100 or so credits for a more professional 'better' system that comes with support and free updates. If someone makes a system or uses a basic one they modify themselves (the best way imo) there is way too much going on already for your average customer. Needing to learn about manual curing and choke? It's enough to break the camel's back.

NOTE: You do no need any qualification in programming to code something. I sure as :censor: don't. It helps, but the best indicator of system coding ability is experience, specifically combat experience. Who do you think codes the BEST parry/stance systems? A knight who's a top tier fighter. He knows what he's looking for, and he tends to know a whole lot about other specs too. The best aeon curing system will come from a celestine or a 'dancer, as they know what they like to stick, and typically what holds the opponent down the longest.

Also please keep your arguements logical and avoid the emotive language and massive conclusion-jumping. The game designers don't have a phd in programming, and pretty sure none or nearly none of the players hold such a qualification either.

You know. I had this whole long post written out explaining to you in simple terms why you're incorrect, but I've decided to cut it down because 1) I don't think you'll read it if it's too long. 2) I said some things that would probably get me warned. 3) I've decided it's not worth any more time because you've one post. You're either entirely too new to this game to be able to effectively judge what Lusternia does or does not need, or you know your ideas are incorrect/not on point and you don't want to be flamed, so you created a new account.

So, in the interest of not bringing up Choke and going into an entirely different argument, I'll just go over your last bit on what you think the biggest barriers are to combat.


1. I don't know why you even mention lessons. You even cited in your example with systems that no one should become a black belt overnight. The same goes with skills. Making trans skills "perks", but not worthwhile is just retarded. If I'm considered an absolute master in a skill, why would I not be able to do something essentially a whole lot cooler and more dangerous/effective than a novice in it? It'd be like a first year art student who just started working with oils painting like Van Gogh. It doesn't make sense. Why should someone who's invested very little be almost just effective as someone who's invested a lot? (See point 4 for how I refute your claim that you have to buy credits).

2. Cost of curatives - Bash. Take Herbs. Take Alchemy. Gold is stupid easy to find here. Enough said.

3. Loss of exp - Man. Death is really weak here, too. Until you start talking level 80+ deaths in enemy territory, it shouldn't even register. Bash. Influence. Aetherbash. It will come back really fast, I promise. You saying it takes hours or even days of bashing to regain the loss is completely false. I've done my share of dying from level 1 - 100, and at no time did deaths (Either from combat or bashing) result in me being set back hours or days experience wise. You're doing something terribly wrong if that's your situation.

4. Inflated credit market - This is called inflation. It's a fact of life. If you don't buy them with real world money, credits (and thus lessons) are possible to obtain. Will it be harder? Of course. But several people have done it. Plus there are artisanal and bardics, contests, and events that also award credits. If you're smart, you'll make friends. You'll ask around for people selling credits below market price. They're there, it happens. Also, no one has billions and billions of gold.

Please do follow your own comment about "keeping arguements (sic) logical and avoid emotive language". You really have no reason to be either so angry or so condescending on the forums.

In any case, I assumed that you make your own systems. Most people code their own systems. You seemed rather keen on reducing or completely eliminating manual combat curing. Hence my Progress Quest comment.

What is Progress Quest? It's a fully automated parody of a MMO.

As for your comment about where combat is balanced towards...yes, combat IS balanced at omni-trans. What most of the people in this topic don't seem to get is that this topic is not about combat balance!

Take a look at the first post:


I have bolded the relevant portions in Estarra's post. Do you really think "First-Aid" is a skill that omni-trans players will use in a system? It definitely seems more geared towards a person sans system that is new, in all terms of the word.


Really. I'm not sure indirectly insulting either my intelligence or my integrity contributes positively to this topic.

Yes, I'm obviously talking about level 80+ deaths. No, not everyone is able to bash offplane without not getting zerged on. Yes, it's easy to get experience at lower levels. No, you can't really get into combat under a certain health level because then you'll just die really fast to damage.

And I don't understand where I ever said that these applied to me, personally. I offered my input on how to streamline combat to introduce new players in. Because, why else would you streamline combat? Whether you've transed every skill period and don't fight, or if you just joined a week ago and want to fight, but have pretty low skills, said person is still just entering combat for the first time.

And as far as your point about lessons goes, I'm sure reality has a big impact on Lusternia! This will have nothing to do with affecting "omni-trans" combat as you say, since you'll get access to all skills. Rather, it will just shuffle around the abilities. It will simply lower the entry barrier to combat.

Mate, clearly you misunderstand my tone. While condescending maybe (and who wouldn't be? You have next to 0 posts, and I've never heard of you. The common assumption is you don't know a whole lot about the finer points of combat) angry I am not. If you want angry, well you can't check my previous threads out because it was in a rants part of the forums that has since been deleted, I can only assume because of the spewing forth of hate that occured therein.

I think you're off the mark with both the progress quest comment and the comment about my desire to eliminate all manual curing. A system which -every- semi-decent fighter has, eliminates the need to manual cure. It -already- doesn't exist, and rightfully so. I cannot desire to remove it when it already doesn't exist. Systems are taken into account when develop skills. If we had to manual cure everything do you think kinghts would have the attacks they do? Would hexes be fast and giving many afflictions? I can tell you illusions and skills which give random afflictions wouldn't really exist without systems. It is an absolute mistake to imply that the game isn't developed around the idea that everyone who wants to fight will have a system. We're discussing BARRIERS to combat, which involves a learning curve. Choke is the biggest thing which makes that curve steep. No question about it.

I personally found the curve for lusternia to be doable, you learn skills, learn to bash, start to fight. Develop a system, learn to cure and what priority needs to occur for best effiency.

PS my comment about 'everything is balanced at omnitrans' is to highlight that in order to be competitive and a 'fighter' you need to buy credits, which gets you lessons and skills. Your implications of those things being a barrier is just not apt.

Finally, I'm going to assume that at level 80 you can't really be involved in combat due to zerg damage. I hope you're talking under lvl 65, but if you mean to say that lvl 80 isn't enough to be a top tier fighter. You're wrong. I've never been over lvl 81..ever. I've been a major thorn in the sides of both celest and serenwilde when they had a strong alliance, I've taken down every single one of their top tier fighters 1v1 (to be fair they've beaten me too, but that's the nature of combat) and I was the first player to kill a demigod in combat. (Murphy vs Aesyra, i'm sure there's a log somewhere) For a long while I was an Aslaran, with health of around 3200 fully buffed, and a lvl 2 sip penalty, as a geomancer, nihilist and bonecrusher warrior. Your character is something that can be worked on with good progress, learning to manual cure is a much more tedious process.

It's a statement of fact. If you're so new to Lusternia you just now made a forum account, I'm going to assume you don't have nearly enough experience to know how to streamline combat. If you are experienced, you probably have a forum account, but for some reason choose not to post on it in this particular thread, which is suspect.

If you're talking about 80+ already, you're not talking newbie. Newbies who bash to 80 in a few days are not newbies, they're alts. True newbies will die before 80, but not suffer any significant losses. Yes, you need high health for group/higher combat. Nothing you can do about that. Lowering skill requirements doesn't make them hurt less.

I used the term "you're" and "you'll" to reference any player, not specifically you. Since I don't know who you are in game, I wouldn't dream of making any assumptions of what does and does not apply to you in game.

Shuffling around skills has a large effect on combat. If skills that are highly effective in combat can be learned quickly with little investment, you're going to have a nightmare group scenario. Imagine three capable fighters leading around 10 newbs that have easy access to sap and have it triggered on command of the competent fighters. You don't have that now, because it's a fabled skill, and that require investment. Push that skill down, and see what happens. (And I'm not trying to pick on Druids, almost all the skillsets have things that would break combat if lowered significantly.)

You're right. We did this in the geomancers with staffcast being used in LOS. A competent raider would lead, call a target and direction, and triggers would fire up to 10 staffcasts from newbie all the way to artied demigod (I love you Athana) usually results in death no matter how much health the target had. It was kinda cheesy but we would routinely take over celestia, stand 1 room out from pool of stars and murder anyone who came up (2 second eq on transverse means you can't shield right away).

Oh, and before you mention it, there are some exceptions. Pushing conglut down does lessen the hurt/risk for newer combatants to take part in off-prime combat without breaking things, though the trans replacement was a bit... meh. Nearly any of the offensive (and a lot of defensive) higher skills will highly screw with balance, though.

At this point, you can do that at will. Grab 30 newbie druids/mages/guardians/wiccan, get them trigger their basic unavoidable bashing attack off of a command, and you still have the same effect. Aegis bond all of them too just for the heck of it.

You can give lowbies web and sleep enchanted jewellery and tell them to just point it at person X over and over and over.

Honestly, there are always ways you can abuse group combat. Group combat is inherently based on numbers. Fact is, the more you want combat to be accessible, the more it is open to being exploited. If players can't self-police, then there will need to be mechanistic hard caps, and then everything goes to

See: Free market and what government interference does to it


1. I really wasn't aware that making a forum account was necessary at all to gameplay.
2. Newbies who bash to level 80 in a few days can just be spending a lot of effort. Honestly it doesn't take that much to be shown how to repeatedly cycle aetherhunting at a turret/hunting Shallach orcs/hunting aslarans and krokani (in fact if you only hit orc warriors/braves/archers and aslaran warriors, you'll only ever need health vials).

It takes like 7 lessons to hit battle in aethercraft. At that point, you'll be getting some massive experience from gargantuans, especially with achievement exp bonus and harmony up.

True, and that's why web immunities are frequently brought up. In fact, it was brought up in this very thread. You're kind of making my point, though. Giving lowbies easy access to even more skills would make group combat more of a nightmare. That's what you just said.

It's not, though generally anyone heavily involved in the game has one, and generally uses their main's name or makes it known who they are after a short while so people know who they're talking to. I also very much assume you have a main forum account you're choosing not to post on and are fairly active in the game as well since you're aware of Ascendancy skills.

That's true. So why is experience loss on death such a barrier? Experience gain past 80 is still silly while aetherbashing, especially if you bring in things like Human + Karma Harmony + Domoth Harmony + Autumn + Facebook blessing + Achievements. We are in total agreement. I'm glad you came around!

My point is that there are enough skills out there that you can "abuse" that a couple more than will definitely allow people with lower lessons to participate in higher tier combat will not affect it -that- much.


Sorry to disappoint, but this is my real name, and this is my only forum account.


It is tedious and boring after a while, especially if the only reason you grind is to get to the level where you can effectively engage in player combat. Regardless of how you people think, any event where you have the possibility of losing experience will have proportionally fewer people participating.

Welcome to IRE, where risk and reward go hand in hand.

Lusternia has more xp-loss mitigating skills and abilites than the other three combined.



But, can we please get back on topic?

This thread is for streamlining combat, not complaining about IRE policy.

You can do it with druids. Has to be a mage/druid class though, what i'm talking about is ranged staffcasts (goes from 1 room along its line of sight)

also, xp loss is necessary to differentiate this between a FPS where there is no death penalty. It makes risky things exciting, especially raiding. Try raiding a village for miners where you'll lose max xp if you're caught. That was exciting. Group events where your personal skill matters little versus the massive zerg.

Anyway, streamlining combat, choke is a major barrier. Fix it, moondancers don't have it and they do just fine.

I'm happy to lose Choke for a regular Aeon, as long as the mana draining abilities for Moondancers and Shadowdancers are balanced again

Too lazy to quote.

Pretty sure you knew I meant in game name when I said that. I don't care what any of your names are in real life. But if your in game name is Geb or something, I have an idea of who you are and what you're capable of. It gives your suggestions more weight. I'm more likely to trust the opinions of someone who is infamous for being highly skilled in combat as opposed to someone who can't fight their way out of a wet paper sack. A lot of the things being discussed are going to cause ripples less experienced people (This includes myself, you'll noticed I haven't made suggestions in this thread.) can't see or don't think about. I'm not saying your name makes your word gospel if you're good, but it certainly puts them into a certain perspective.

Yes, leveling is tedious. Gathering gold to supply yourself is tedious. This is the nature of the beast. You (I assume) have a job that can probably be tedious that you keep because you need money so you can eat, have extras (Like a sweet connection so you can post here!), and have someplace to sleep and keep your things. (Alternatives - you have people that support you who have tedious jobs OR you won the lottery/got a sweet inheritance.) The thing about this though is EVERYONE from level one to 100 has to do this. Demigods need essence - even more so now - and gold.

And... if there's no risk, where's the fun? Dying is supposed to hurt. It's supposed to encourage you to get better. That was one of the arguments for raising (Or some argue - fixing) essence loss in enemy territory for demigods.

Honestly, if you want a place where you can just log in and run around going, "OMGDIEDIEDIEHAHAHA", switch to a God Wars type of mud.

Experience penalties, skill building, grinding, and gold gathering are all about making a player think AND to invest. Ultimately there is a bottom line. Yes, credits will slow down people who don't spend real world money - not stop them. Yes, curatives are one of the dozens of gold sinks in this game. Without them, credits would be even higher. More gold in the world == less valued == higher credit prices.

I'm not arguing with you that I don't get annoyed that I have to spend a few hours in aetherspace to regain essence, or bash the overbashed areas for gold - I do. That's not the argument though, it's whether or not these things are BARRIERS for entering combat. And they're not.

The barrier to combat in Lusternia is that it's simply more complex that most MUDs around. There are multiple curing balances and multiple types of afflictions: physical, mental, wounds, so on. There are 4 variable status levels to track (health, mana, ego, power) and all of them have attacks specialized to them and kill-conditions based on them. All of the above come with their own cures, defences, and specialized skills. This is why it's hard to write your own system. This is why it's hard to manual choke curing. This is why it's hard for newbies to enter combat. Everything else mentioned, imho, is only a result of this, for better or for worse.

You take me back bud.. my hands haven't shaken from an intense fight in probably 2 or so years..

Oh BTW, if I die in any enemy terr right now I lose 2.05 MILLION essence minimum, even if hunting. Only fools raid now without having a significant advantage (aka zerg). It's rather tragic.

Edit: Hmm streamlining. A good start would be to reduce easily abusive maneuvers.
-I'd start with shieldstun, which I would say was never accounted for at demigod level. Higher str means longer stun, and classes who wield shields have lower strength traditionally, but demigods of those classes throws it off balance with their access to very high strength. I presonally don't get why headslam is grossly worse than shieldstun. 'nuff said.

-Choke, all the reasons I can think of have been said countless times. It needs to be changed period. Not nerfed, changed (I personally like the scrub cure idea, kudos to whomever suggested it.)

-Combine similar afflictions (the wiki has a good list, it's pretty simple to look at them and smush some together) not needed really, but it would make system building slightly easier and reduce layers of curing minorly. Again, not a big thing.

-Broken record for 5 years and counting, but I still think the commune totem power passive gain is just absurd, unbalanced, and only causes pain on all sides from chopping.

-Shadows in the room stopping all other org regen is too powerful and impacting. Regen is a huge thing, particularly when chasing curing on instakills that require certain h/m/e levels. Absurd. That's the same of thousands of damage in mere seconds if several are in the room.

-I think DMP across the board needs a review, some classes get nearly zero DMP of any kind, whereas some can get insane DMP irregardless of race.

This does not happen now. Did, but it was changed long ago (before I even went Glomdoring). Here:

Syntax: SHADOWDANCE DRINK
Power: 4 (Master Ravenwood)
You can only invoke this spell within released shadows. Once invoked you
will automatically drink of the powers of darkness, which means your
body will regenerate and cure itself of ailments.

Um no. I'm talking about shadows released in the room. Not drink.

You have the skill, please peruse AB NIGHT CAULDRON.