The problem with raiding in general is that it is really hard to hit a magic equilibrium on difficulty. Right now, most smob deaths happen at what many people would term "off" hours. To me, that's fine. Good even. Because if they were more managable while actively defended for "peak" raids, then you know what would happen?

The raids would STILL happen during off hours with no defenders. They would just happen more often and result in weaker orgs getting in to the "why bother logging in, when the game to me is rebuilding our sandcastle every day so the same people can knock it down again later" spiral.

Raids DO happen now. Sometimes they even kill smobs. It would be hard to have a perfect situation, but the current balancing keeps raids out of the dark and stupid place they wound up at in past years.

As for phasing out ascendants, yes please. Creating a mechanically elite subset of the playerbase never really sat well with me anyway however. I think it would be great if everyone had the same demi-points, and access to the the same skills to buy with them. Nobody gets more, nobody gets freebies. Set the costs up so there are choices to be made, and then we'd get some actual diversity across the player base.

Like, do you buy the hypothetical powers that help your group in combat, or do you spend your points on stuff that will help you bash, or improve your personal offense, or give more basic utility, or fun RP stuff? The way things work now, ascendants "sorta" do that, but not really, and the regular demis try to spread a little sliver of butter across a large piece of bread and make the best of it.

Sidd has too. Poor Sidd.

I like ascendants, and it was fun to be one for a little while. It was a nice achievement for my character. It would be kind of cool if we demis could buy ascendant powers as ephemerals.

I'm very torn about the revolts. I think generating positive feelings actively could be made a little easier. The bonus for maxxed feelings may be too high. The threshold for victory may be reached too quickly. At the same time, I like that the current system seems to reward preparedness. We had practically the whole commune in Paavik before anyone from any other org entered, and so I don't necessarily feel this was horrible unfair. Uncontested villages have always gone incredibly fast.

I think insanity is good because it preserves astral as a bashing ground for others by forcing groups or individuals to take breaks. I can think of a couple of individuals who could entirely drain astral in a day or two, leaving it as empty as pre-ascendance on a near constant basis. Muud is pretty much not worth the bother since the changes to mobs, but insanity seems appropriate given the context.

Agree about toning down distort.

Agree about more interaction, but Arel's right, it's a fine line and I understand why some don't want to even get near it.

I've heard that besides astral, Lusternia doesn't "do" straight bashing areas. I'm not sure about a conflict thing. It sounds nice, but, we have a lot of recurring conflicts already. P.S. Stop doing wild nodes at 1 a.m. on Tuesday when you schedule it for Sunday.

Agree about the promotions, overall but that feedback probably has to go to IRE. The Wheel was pretty fabulous this month, and distinctly Lusternian. I like that it seems set up to be a permanent fixture. It's especially nice because it was a player idea taken from these forums.

I think it would be nice to add in the ability to demigods to "unlock" the different domoth powers using their own essence and also to unlock more weight for themselves (up to some max). For typical demis, after getting Second Tradeskill, there's really nothing else to spend essence on or have any set goals to reach. This would still keep Ascendents around and have it be a cool achievement and make it easier to get those powers, but also open it up for demis and give demis more longterm goals other than a second trade skills (or hoping to get lucky to get Veneration).

I had assumed Lusty was dropping on TMS 'cus IRE wanted to branch out to other resources to get new players, namely Digg atm.

Address ascendants, avatars, cults, shrines, monks, telekinetics, distort, choke, trueheal, ... well, you get the picture.

I'm a bit surprised by this - particularly because I've always considered Lusternia to be toting "the best" in terms of areas, quests and rate of growth. While admittedly I can't off-hand say how many areas this year have been released (more because I have no concept of time and I'm always shocked when someone mentions it's been more than a year since Gaudiguch and Hallifax came out), from passing observance it certainly feels like we grow faster than most other IREs. We definitely have the most involved quests, and many people argue /too many/ of them have reaching affects (ie "conflict quests") and we should actually scale back. Guess we can't please everyone!

The demi thing could definitely be looked at. There are no real choices as is; if I don't aim for a second trade skill, I can grab everything I want and some I'm not a huge fan of. With it, I've given up little to nothing that I actually wanted. If there were actually choices to be made as a demi, I'd be happy.

I don't think the game needs new stuff so much as it needs a better atmosphere.

As mentioned, the corporate stuff (the IG promotions, and the very corporate website) are a huge turnoff for me. Admittedly, I still sign on to get the last of my canceled elite membership lessons, and to spin the wheel (because it amuses me), but it just gives a completely different feeling to the game, with everyone chasing bandits on temp arty day, or everyone bashing on bonus crit day or not a soul on prime on bonus xp weekend. It really takes away from the feeling of a world that people are living in which was part of the appeal of the game to me.

The raiding situation with it getting more and more difficult to raid is frustrating to me too. Raiding and defending were the most exciting times of the game, and... it never happens. Since I returned, I've probably put on a few days of game time, and I was a part of maybe 1-2 raids where we crushed the opposition, and defended against small groups a couple times, where they were typically able to get away, but werent able to cause much damage, so it was basically lots of chasing. Not very fun. Admittedly more combat events have been added, but, with the exception of wildnodes, they never had the same appeal to me, I'm not entirely sure why. In my opinion, raiding needs to be more feasible. This game is notorious for features/skills swinging wildly between one extreme or the other- raiding is one of things that lusternia needs to find a middle ground on.

Aetherbashing needs to go away, or be about 1/4 or less as good as it is. I've aetherbashed maybe 3 hours ever, and it was easily the best experience I have ever seen. That outing occurred since my latest return, and has made up of about half of my total experience gain since then, and all I did was sit in the anchor and kill slivvens for a few hours. I mean, come on, I'm not anywhere close to the best basher out there, but if, as a demigod, aetherbashing is so good that doing anything else is pointless, surely that is a sign that something is wrong. Another effect of this is that if you don't aetherbash, you're rarely going to see a lot of the people who do, which, to me, has disrupted the sense of community that I've always enjoyed about muds.

Also, I've made my opinions on the demigod/ascendant thing very clear, so I won't bother to repeat it. However, I feel like its important for games like this to have a worthy but difficult to achieve goal. Demigod has become neither. If demigod was always as it is today, I would have never of bothered to get it, and I probably would have drifted away from the game sooner.

Lately, to me, the lusternia experience has become a chat room, with my triggers repeating the symbol strike command for about an hour, while I hope that something actually happens. Then nothing happens and I leave, wondering why I even bothered to sign on. I'm sure I could involve myself more in my guild and city, but that is never what attracted me to Lusternia, and it doesn't attract me now. What I liked about it has been pretty thoroughly wrung out of the game over the years. I wanted to like it, I really did, I even blew about $100 or so to get Acrune the skills in the latest guild hop, but to no avail. These reasons, in my opinion, are why Lusternia has fallen in the ranks (assuming it has, I havent bothered to verify).

I agree with... well, everything you said. The raiding situation I go back and forth on, but everything else, firm yes. Good luck getting rid of aetherbashing though. People paid money for aetherships, and their money is worth more than anything else.

I think the dip in TMS is in part changes to the web site, and in part IRE's gradual phasing out of TMS. Really, TMS is more or less (at least IMO) a bit of a joke--I've voted but I never understood it. The same fans vote every 12 hours--that's not really anything more than a popularity contest. (A long time ago I heard of one MUD that got people to vote even if it was vaporware). In this case, I think tapping into Social Media is probably better long term.

I'm neutral about the promotions--I think they reward powergaming and get away from the strong RP, but at the same time they can bring back older players. I don't think they hurt the core values of it.

This game has had a load of events and expansions each year, I can't see that being a problem. Eventru is correct on that front.

With so many Demigods, maybe it is time to consider a radical change--upping the level limit. Is there any reason for a level cap of 100 in Lusternia? Maybe we need to add a level system for Demigods and Vernals. This is a fair question as I think it might benefit the game just to add another set of levels, because other games from Tabletop to MMOs do this. Maybe we need to go to level 125 or 150 and adapt Demigods--maybe every 5 levels you get an extra power. And maybe Ascendants get some special stuff themselves. Also, I think another person had the idea to make special artifacts for Demigods and Vernals.

PS--I agree Aetherbashing can make people go into "auto-pilot", but I think the general situation is better than when people weren't using Aetherships, which took a lot of time to implement and I can't see that going away. I have suggested considering adding additional risks--such as Gnafia raids inside the ships, for instance, if you are out too long.

This will make the already wide gap between new players and top tier even wider. I'd like that gap narrowed.

I agree with everything Acrune said. And some of Everiine's points as well.

I don't agree with Rainydays regarding raids: They do not happen much. They really don't. If everyone turned their attention towards Hallifax/Gaudi it was mainly because they didn't have distort/ripple up around the clock, without available security members. And they haven't been raided much, of late. Deathsense doesn't lie. Lusternia has been very dull. I don't want anyone to feel griefed but I also don't feel raiding should be so difficult. There needs to be a distort/ripple/liveforest cool-off period, maybe.

@Talan: Winning villages in 2 minutes was not a common event before village-feelings. Yes, getting all your people in is great but it didn't always end without a second round. The mountain villages are a prime example of how ridiculously short revolts have become. 5 villages go up and it's over in less than 10 minutes? What fun is that? I know people like having a stack of villages but I think revolts can be really fun if they lasted a tiny bit longer.

Re: Ascendants- I don't mean that demigods should get more ascendant powers. I just wish they had never come to be. 'Buying' demigod always seemed like a terrible idea, excluding demis that get raised. It's a huge burden to place on a player, limits their options considerably and so on. I don't know of a way to phase it out without people feeling cheated. As Talan said, she liked being ascendant and it does have some perks but for me, it feels like a burden at times with everyone expecting you to do everything and treating you like org property.

Like I've said for a few years, Lusternia is no longer a roleplaying game. It's an event-based game. You do nothing until an event occurs (using a more general definition of event), and then you roleplay for as long as you need to for the purposes of that event.

I don't think that's true. I see a lot of RP all the time in Hallifax. I don't play alts much, but I doubt that everywhere else is a barren wasteland devoid of meaningful RP interaction. Glom used to be the place to go if you wanted to RP and a lot of those people are still around (Xenthos, Astraea, Druken, Eliron, etc.) so I can't see Glom having faded out of that completely. Not sure about other places, but I see Iytha pretty active in RP activities.

It's definitely true.

There's a big sense of "if it's not mechanical it's not 'real'".

I think I have to go with Arel here. Glomdoring is still lush with active roleplay experiences. Just last night, Eliron and I busied ourselves with promoting the family name through various snooty excursions (Inseira's kind of like the Malfoy family), Astraea and I are constantly exerting the Shadowdancer roleplay on all of its new members (who are loving it so far!), and there's always a really cool tension between some of the families that comes to a head when we have public disagreements.

None of that stuff is mechanical. The families are, sure, but our vocal and often melodramatic disagreements have nothing really to do with the fact that my family's honour has 27k something something. WE have decided how the families will interact with one another based upon who our characters are.

I'm sorry if your organizations aren't really rife with people who want to spend the effort on making Lusternia a roleplay heavy place to be. Maybe you aren't hanging out with the right people?

I agree with this. The wheel and the curios have been the best promo in ages, if only because it feels a little more than something tacked on without a thought.

In regard to roleplay, there will always be various little pockets here and there, but I do get that chat room feel moreso from the game now than in the past. I think it crops from a variety of factors: too much time in aetherspace, too many promos with good rewards but no sensible IC basis, and in general, too much stuff to do. I have so many things to worry about and consider that it's hard to focus on things that don't have any mechanical merits or concrete value.

The chatroom vibe is also something that is contagious and spreads the longer it is left unchecked. I don't think there's any suitable solution for that apart from ourselves, though - we're being poor self-moderators.

To be honest Eventru, I look at Lusternia and compare it to other MMO games on the market(many of which I played for years before making the switch to MUDs). Even if those games draw an entirely different demographic, game world expansion is a crucial and necessary thing.

I would wager that releasing a couple fleshed-out hunting/quest areas would bring back a lot of old players, moreso than promotions ever would. Especially when this content is released in a way that sets the general tone of things for a time to come. It's hard to really explain that idea in a clear way.

For example, releasing a nearby island area outside the Basin which is accessible by boat. Stick a bunch of high level mobs like semi-soulless dinosaurs/drakes/raptors on it. Give us a unique and memorable experience which will entertain us for 2 months before we get new content. We love that kind of stuff. Really.