I've noticed that the people who hate promos are usually demigod/have a fair bit of credits already. I haven't seen many people who are grinding to demigod/still trying to fill out their artie set complain about the double experience and free credits.

I think the promos are great. Keep them coming. No idea why someone would complain about free stuff.

I, too, love the promos.

I don't understand this thread for a few reasons. The promos are not forced on us. You don't have to collect curios, you don't have to bash every Thursday, you don't have to type in DADSRULE on Father's Day. They are extra things to cut down the monotony that the SAME PEOPLE who don't like promos are complaining about.

Figure out some way to be happy in Lusternia, guys. Pick one or two of the myriad things that Estarra and Co are constantly hurtling at us to keep us all entertained, or maybe consider the fact that you might need some time off.

I also don't really understand the complaints about aetherspace. You want people to stop roving around in ships so they can come back and sit around with you while you wait for patrons to create your own roleplay experience?

I've seen plenty. What would be more accurate would be to suggest that they are a combination of people who have been around for a long time, as well as people who have seen general CT/GT discussion change significantly as a result. You might get used to ignoring all the extra spam when it comes up when you log in, but it's a different story when lots of other people seem to think it's the only worthwhile point of discussion and will ask about/share their experiences with the promo more than actual IC communication. Which, again, will vary on where you are and is still a more player side problem generally.

I like the promos as well, for my alts more than anything else, though I am so much closer to having my custom pet now I can almost taste it. I like that I can log on once a day do something fun, (The wheel has been awesome!) and get something either at the end of the month, or daily, and feel like I don't have to spend hundreds of thousands of gold on my other characters in order to get a few trans skills and become decent at combat. I have a little pyromancer I want to play with now, and I want my spiritsinger to trans wildarrane, and I want Shishi to finally trans blademaster, and maybe do something with my paladin alt, because I've always wanted to try that knighting ceremony everyone talks about as being super awesome. Now I actually have the gold/credits to do something about it if I ever have time to play them. (And convince Valonah to play with me on them)

Right now I'm kind of excited about what the Shadowdancers potentially have going for them, and am willing to put forward my gold in game and my myriad of ideas to make some of the things work and help make them super awesome again, without me having to do a lot of the work by myself.

The problem is, there's another side of the coin to this. For better or worse, there are people who will feel obligated to walk in to a meat grinder, despite any fun derived from it having long since evaporated. There's only so many days a person wants to walk in to a combatant heavy opposition holding their own plane against them, so that they can die in seconds, with no realistic chance to escape once initiated, to . I like the current system. It isn't perfect, but we will never have a perfect system. Still, there are the rare serious supernal/DL/Avatar raids that do manage to kill some or all of them. This is really one of those situations where the old paraphrased Lincoln quote is very applicable here- You can please all of the people some of the time, you can please some of the people all of the time, but you can't please all of the people, all of the time." So you try to achieve a medium where the most possible customers are satisfied.

If the last few years have demonstrated anything, its that the forum goers represent an active, and vocal, minority, but are not representative of the playerbase at large. Look back at the old polls for "what will we work on this month"- the forum consensus would seem to be "WE LOVE WIDGETS, OMG MORE WIDGETS". Estarra makes an in game post to come on the forums and vote, and it turns out most people hate, or at least, couldn't be bothered to care about widgets.




I've never felt like I had it all. There's always something else to work on, something that I should be improving about myself (whether I'm actively doing it or not). To me, the essence pile is just an obnoxious barrier that needs to be passed, so I never understand (and I realize this isn't what you're saying here) the logic of "we need to grind for more levels. I need to do a mindless task for hundreds of hours so that I have something to do!" - I'll finish that thought with another quote! "If you're bored then you're boring." - Harvey Danger




One of the things I'm doing as a Cantor is giving it a bit of a workout to see how bashing is for different people. I know how it was for me as a paladin, at the moment, I'm testing "reaaaally squishy seasinger merian Cantor with a trader bob lute, no shield, and not using glamours to its best effect". In a few months, I'll pliers over a few runes on to a real instrument, get a health blessing, get some DMP tattoos, and otherwise try to minimize the seasinger splat-factor. Then I'll try it as a different race. If the results are at all interesting, I'll probably post about it or something.





I don't hate them really, though I can see how being beset by curios seekers or trying in vain to piece one together when everyone is rubbing commons would be annoying. I'm just really thankful Curios weren't some new "lol, need this for fighting-bashing, even if it's technically "optional"" thing. My biggest annoyance is trying to get anything done that requires other people, and doesn't involve being locked in to a module on double XP days.



The problem comes down to the weight cap for us plebians. There are at least three things from what we have now that I want, but can't get, because of that damn cap. There are other things that I would buy because I like them, but they fall well behind the stuff I feel I need and can't get, so they're moot. Giving me more options to spend on with the same point cap isn't going to help me. It's just going to piss me off. "Here's more cool toys that you'll never ever have! Back to the credit mines, oompah loompah!"

Its like going to , and you have 5 bucks. The waiter comes up and tells you about all the delicious new items they've just added, but all you can get is a side salad. Have a nice day!



There's a quest in the Athenaeum? I thought there was, and it seemed to involve the saints, which seemed really interestng, but I couldn't even figure out what it was or how to start it, or even if it was really there, let alone how to solve it.

I'm not really sure how to resolve the concerns regarding 'the weight problem' - but I will say the oft-touted "no special snowflakes" argument holds no water with me. So if you have an opinion or idea that is interesting and exciting, I'd be glad to hear it, and maybe we can throw it to Estarra and see how she feels. Maybe allow people to buy extra weight with essence? Of course it'd be expensive, but apparently demigod is "stupid simple," as my nephew says, so what's to complain about if there's something out there to grind for.

I know a lot of people feel aetherspace is 'ez xpz,' but I'm at a loss as to how to we could address it. If it isn't good, no one does it - if it's good, no one seems to do anything else. Obviously we're fond of Aetherspace and the system, so we'd like to see it used - but we don't want to see normal bashing and influencing fall to the wayside in the process. Hopefully once we start bringing in mob weaknesses and resistances, we'll see some being more efficient bashers (though I'm sure it won't reach the point of Aetherspace in terms of income).

The quest in the Athenaeum is a bit obscure, but fairly simple - someone stumbled upon it a couple weeks ago, but alas, never finished it.

Until I reach the point where I have designed everything in the entire world as an in-game design, I will never have it all. Nor will I until I complete my aethership. I think that as one reaches demigod their focus changes. Quite frankly, I wouldn't mind losing demigod just to regain it again, though. I find now that I sit back, relax, idle a lot while I'm writing and working on stuff for in-game, but when I do come out I do so for roleplay, combat, and the guild work that Aeral is supposed to be doing. I just find that a lot of other older characters complain about there being nothing to do, and hence their absences.



Okay. I must admit, DADSRULE did make me smile. Some of these quirky, silly little things I don't mind. Perhaps it's just that these past few promotionals haven't been ones that I've enjoyed as much as others. Though the Wheel has been downright annoying at times, I can't complain because hey it's free stuff, and my alts are around level 50 now without bashing. It's pretty fun to walk in, spin the wheel, get two or three levels and have some of the older players congratulate you. From that standpoint, the past month of promotions I think has drawn Lusternia together. Maybe I've been eating too many snugglepills or something. I think that perhaps I was unfair in complaining so much about the promotions. I know that they put a lot of effort into doing these with little reward (other than those who do enjoy them) and I'm sorry I complain so terribly much about promotions. I just... I guess I find it very commercial. Lusternia is a business, but I feel that Lusternia has also always been about the people who play it. I guess I need to stop thinking about the promotions so much as being a commercial money-making thing and more about grabbing and attracting new people to the game.



My prayers and messages yet go unanswered. Or maybe I'm silly and keep actually forgetting to send them. You'll get your new Ferrari, rest assured. But it has to be blue!

I've not seen any!

And thank you. Fuschia with lime green stripes it is.

I can see it now.

It's "stupid simple" if you're sitting in one of the prime ship modules. If not, the process is straight-forward, but it requires a lot more effort. There are plenty of people without regular access to ships. While my personal aversion to them is largely by choice, they will always feel like an awkward mechanic to me.

This isn't to say that I feel they should be nerfed. In fact, as someone who rarely uses them herself, I appreciate that the existence of aetherspace means that my normal hunting is less contested and crowded. I appreciate that they give a way for large groups of players to advance without stepping on eachother's toes. I appreciate that this thus dances around an issue suffered by some other MUDs in my experience- that there's diminishing returns beyond a certain point regarding playerbase size, as activites that are largely exclusionary to sharing become "filled up".

I feel aetherspace, despite my own and other complaints, serves a useful function in keeping the MUD and playerbase healthy, and it should always be seen as one of the better alternatives to normal bashing because of these benefits.

That said, I also feel that the gap shouldn't be as large with regular bashing, especially given our roided up mobs, and I stick to my "no special little snowflake" guns, because someone should, because I think that's the best policy, and because more practically, hopefully some little snippits of such chatter from the peasants can waft in to someone's ear at some point, or at least be a pebble in the scales of justice. It's a war of inches.

If it's the quest with the papers, cats, etc, I stumbled upon it in February, but it was kinda bugged, and I was told they couldn't replicate my bug. Bug 16148.

*chin* For some reason her script was disabled. It works now!

I sort of started to work on it and I knew there was more to it but I could never quite figure it out. I want to, now!

The promotions are fine, and while I can sympathize with the reasons people dislike them, I don't think they're harming the game. People who take Lusternia far too seriously(or themselves) except the game to be played in a 'serious' way. Lusternia has never been that game to me. We're like Alice in Wonderland and everyone is a supermortal. There are aetherbubbles made of candy, dandelion fae, and other various ridiculous things outside of the promotions. Get over it.

As for "fixing" RP in Lusternia, no amount of hard-coded intervention will change this. It's up to each and every one of us, individually, to make RP quality better. Whenever an admin has directly or indirectly affected RP, players flip out. Search yourselves.



You're right, there have been a lot of areas released recently. Outside of the villages, I don't consider a lot of them visible to the average player. How many of those are hunting areas? I admittedly haven't seen all of them yet. The Throne was a great idea and it makes a great addition to the game.

Something small that might help improve RP would be to encourage everyone to create a background. I haven't written one yet for Ushaara myself, but I have an outline and it's something I'm trying to add to with each big experience that happens him. I hope she won't mind, but I was amazed and inspired when I read Tsianina's background (VIEW BACKGROUND TSIANINA) when I was randomly reading character backgrounds.

This could be included perhaps as an achievement, in fact why not try think of more rewards for RP related achievements? Or make more use of that credibility thing from a person's honours and give small (non-combat related) benefits for increased character credibility?

Edit: Ooh, and while we're at writing backgrounds. Get each god to write their own background too! I can't be the only one who's sad the Elder War books have been completed.

Isn't that uneditable after you make it? Or is that something else? I know I thought about it and then got paranoid that I'd screw up and never touched it.

Yes, it's permanent, but you can append more chapters in HISTORY.

Heh, which is why I haven't recorded one yet for myself. Though they allow you to have chapters, which are updates essentially. Being able to edit it would be nice though, since the editor can be temperamental with spacing etc.

Meh. Never going to touch it then.