The thing is that every other but Conquest can raise feelings in all villages. You can always do comm-quests, you can always influence. Once you own a big enough number of villages though, your raiding options gets severely limited, and guards only increase the difficulty. For instance, I don't have anything at all I can do to village feelings under a conquest system, but everyone can help influence villagers and do comm quests if they do it undetected.

You realize the same things that make it nearly impossible for you to influence the villages you don't have, make it nearly impossible for anyone else to influence yours in precisely the same way, right? I can't do comm quests or influence in yours any more than you can raid mine, and for the exact same reasons.

(Except of course Serenwilde has the two sucker's villages only, the least defensible villages in the whole Basin, so we have it rather worse, but let's forget that factor. Without that, it's pretty much even.)

The difference is that as soon as I try to raid, you get told and rush to defend, enemying me shortly after my first attempt. I can, however, influence and do comm quests to my hearts content as long as you don't find out. Once you're enemied though, yeah, it's the same.

It's hard to not get caught, and doing comm quests only serves to help your enemies and their (now-isolated) economy.

It's kindof a sucky position all around, I guess.

I see nothing wrong with that logic... successful nations that are expanding through conquest don't really get weaker.

It's not the logic that's the problem.

In the real world, it makes a lot of sense. In the game world, it makes things unfun for some.

Successful nations get weaker when their top people defect.

What's "wrong with the logic" is that too many long-term slippery slope mechanics without perpetual comeback mechanisms can be unhealthy for persistent game environments. There's no point arguing about the internal logic of the game world when that's not actually the issue at hand.

EDIT: Somehow ninja'd twice in like the 6 minutes it took to write this...I should be asleep

Kaervas too

Oh, so the balance only applies to people not enemied to Glomdoring. Well, that makes all the difference, then. There's so many of those, and it's so hard to get enemied! For instance, I hear that you can be enemied merely for being noticed being sarcastic on the forum, and that's so difficult to manage.

If I wanted to mention a weapon that was not in HELP WEAPONS (like a Wakizashi) in say, a play or a book, would I be allowed, or is that going outside of Lusternia?

I'm certainly not one to really know, but there are katana in the game and wakizashi are awesome very similar to weapons that are in-game. But many may know what they are (IC especially), and if deep down you think it's too 'outside' lusternia, someone else will be very disgruntled.


(But see if you can find one! I'm almost certain I've seen a weapon with either tanto or wakizashi in their description, but I have no idea where!)

Awesome, thank you! I'll be psyched to be able to use it. I'll be even more psyched if I'm able to design a Wakizashi under Blades and see if I can get it approved.

Are defenses still lost upon death in an arena? Or did they fix that?

Or did I only imagine that? >_>

The loser does lose all their defences. Winner keeps.

And there goes my idea of gaining some combat experience from the arena.

Put them up in the arena, they won't cost you anything, then.

I suspect that by the time I raise my Discipline past capable, I will have ended up getting some experience.

As is, I would feel bad having anyone wait for the five minutes it takes me to get fully def up.

Some power-heavy defs (nightkiss/drawdown, possibly some others) now last through death and will thus still be on you when you exit the arena.

This is, I believe, is an untestable thing, but does Leadership in Influence affect the size of a mindlink squad?