I believe this whole issue was answered with Report 612.

Ah, I didn't see eventru's reply when writing my post. It is far more difficult for me to make the argument I want to make because those figures are not available to me. I am not talking about time spent, but difficulty raiding, and how well cosmic mobs defend themselves. If you could please, Show the amount of deaths during the demonlord raids and then during the continuum raids, and if possible deperate out defenders from attacks, if not I can edit and do that to show the amount of raids vs defenders, and the amount of subsequent deaths in each raid

Well, /thread now that Eventru's posted with timestamps. 5 minutes heh.

P.S. I got a lot of killing blows. Pimpin'

Time to kill != difficulty.

Both the Demon Lord defense and Spheres defense went pretty horrible, though. I'm interested in seeing what the spheres are capable of now that they should be unbugged.

What? The longer it takes for us to kill everything, the more chance you guys get to actually manage up a decent defense force and successfully drive us out. So yes, the longer it takes, the harder things generally should be.

The onus was on you to be competent about it.

Also, some other posts I missed @nienla, I don't believe that cosmic needs to be buffed overall, I just think they need to be made the same as demonlords/supernals on all cosmic planes. This would nerf 2 organizations defenses (which most people agree are too difficult) and buff 2 organizations defenses (which I would have thought most would agree are too easy, but maybe not)

@eventru. The 5 minutes thing was Phoebus. I don't agree about her time arguement and she wasn't there for the raid. I am just talking about how well they defend themselves. You're correct, I don't have first hand knowledge of raiding spheres, but I knew something was wrong. I don't have the benefit of looking at the code, or having a force of 30 fighters so I can test balance, I do with what is available to me which is very very very little

I'm not spending my afternoon yanking apart kill logs to find who killed who when and where and who died to mobs and what have you. It's silly and pointless - particularly when we've already acknowledged the spheres were doing less damage than they should've (the defending-attacks were on par with kelpies, instead of spheres, damage-wise), as well Luciphage lasted longer than he should have, killing throughout that period, so it's a wholly frivolous and pointless effort on my part, as the data will be tainted.

Because there's no comparison to be made between the two right now.

Wait until the next raid, and I'm sure you'll get your "haha they lost so much XP but DAMNIT we still lost all the same stuff we did before" enjoyment I imagine you're missing out on.

And, in this theoretical postulation of bringing the 'territories' into 'line', I assure you Continuum and Vortex will be genuinely nerfed, not buffed, at the end of the day. It will take half the time to kill them, and they'll do less damage in your average fight. It'll also force defending mobs into the rooms with the raiders, instead of allowing you to sit at them, waiting for them to come to you.

I think that Estarra figures Ethereal is just right because it's a fortress, but it's all out of skew because of this. It's impossible to do anything meaningful there because Avatars are so tough to kill. But it's also trivially easy to do anything meaningless there because the archways bypass all methods of obstructing, from nexus distort to block and everything in between. The result: the more we have none of the meaningful raids Estarra intended, the more we have the pointless petty ones.

The problem is I think Estarra doesn't realize how out of whack it has gotten. Every time it was too easy to raid Ethereal, there were buffs... in the wrong place, at the Avatars. Every time it was too hard, there were nerfs... in the wrong place, at the archway. So it's "balanced" in precisely the worst way: a way that promotes wear-people-down, suck-out-the-fun-from-Lusternia raids that do nothing, and have no objective, and thus never end; but that prevents the kinds of raids where you can win, or lose, and either way, go home, and be done.

It seems it's impossible to get the admins to look at that because they're too hung up on the idea "is it balanced?" as if this were a single-variable equation. This is a problem similar to what Morbo's complaining about in the original post, though not quite the same, because in his complaint, he alleges that it really isn't balanced, it just appears to a superficial glance that it is; but in Ethereal, it is balanced, just in exactly the worst way.

If they'd make the Avatars half as strong and let the archway be affected by distort and such, I'd take that deal in a second, even though the Avatars would fall ten times as often.

During the DLs it was mainly lowbies who died, ie: Kayaldiyah, Shakaya, Eliron(maybe), Thernial, Demis who weren't accustomed to raiding/large scale raids, Telperion, Faragan, and the super squishy demis, me, Aeral, Alacardael, Nienla. Both my deaths could be attributed to lag mainly, I ran out of health near the end and still stayed alive. I died to Morbo during spheres because I ended up d/c'ing. I d/c'ed 3-5 times during spheres.

Guardian archetypes have access to the cosmic plane logs. I have no idea what yours is called, but you have it. If you download the firefox IRE addon and log into your character and click on 'logs' you can see every log available to you - even the cosmic plane one.


Also /thread since Eventru came in and Chuck Norris'd this .

What does the Nest have to do with Glumki/Gwyllgi/Lhiannan, IE Glom's Avatars.

I'm missing something.

Have had a little bit of coffee. Going to try to put my (very disjointed) thoughts on the table.

I think one of the problems with raids on Continuum is that Hallifax is...very low on population. When I play my alt, I am consistently blown away by the number of people online in her organization. Every single night is like one of those days in Hallifax where I go "whoa! There's people here! Exciting." And when Hallifax does have people around, most of those people are new. Like, legitimately new. A very sizable chunk of Hallifax is made up of people who are actual new players, not alts or transfers from other orgs.

What this means is that all those things that people are good at, because they've done it a million times before and can go through the motions? We still have to puzzle out. I am one of those new people, too. I started playing after Hallifax had been out for a month already, and I'm in a leadership position in the city now, and have been for...holy crap I think like, almost a year? AUGH what anyway-- One of our past city leaders (Sylandra <3) had been playing for even less time than I had. We are a city of 90% relative newbies! Things that seem obvious, especially in regards to fighting and defending, are still pretty new to us as a whole. We've got a few old hands around, sure, but they can't always be there to help us, and not all of them were really ever involved in the things we need help with.

So that, on top of the fact that spheres are less beefy than the other guys, kind of makes us that kid who gets picked on because everyone knows he can't stand up for himself. I know we try. I know I try. I know Hallifax isn't just giving up, I know people aren't leaving because they don't want to do work. But it's still frustrating. To just lose, all the time! I think that would get to anyone. I try not to let games get to me, so yeah, when I start to feel depressed or too annoyed about all the crap we gotta slog through to get back in working order after a raid, I do log out. But I come back. I think that's an important part. Um, not really sure about the point I'm trying to make here. Like I said, disjointed.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is, nah, we don't need a massive overhaul on cosmic/ethereal raiding or super crazy changes made or a great big bland-aid (puns!) slapped across everything. It's just, a combination of our overall lack of experience and our lack of people in the first place (much less ones who would even define themselves as combatants), with having the relatively weaker cosmic mobs, that is causing us to get steamrolled what seems like over and over and over.

We DO need to improve ourselves to help make things better, but it would be really nice if at the very least we weren't "easy pickin's" (and I reiterate, relatively) too. There probably shouldn't be an order you can go in to stop the spheres from helping one another, for instance. I think tweaking how the spheres assist one another would help a lot. That would probably be a good place to start. I don't think asking for gigantic re-dos of everything is going to get us anywhere. I think what is already there can be worked with, and probably be a lot more constructive to discuss!

You seem to be missing the part where I said this was one from a while ago! Like, back before the mob overhaul while ago.

Wait, ignore that part, I'm thinking of something from a long time ago. I'll remove that part. (This is so not about Seren-vs-Glom anyway; I'd hate to let that distract from the actual point there.)

That's no excuse. Hallifax messes with time and all.

Aison, my argument was never about time, It was always about difficulty fighting a single room of a demonlord. Someone in the thread (I think Nyd, but I'm not positive) said most of their time wasn't spent fighting spheres anyways, it was spent navigating Continuum. this is not something that helps us as defenders as it hinders us just as much. I reiterate, Time is not the issue. Also, the figures I was saying weren't available to me were the kills, not the powerlogs.

I am told that I need to make my arguments based on facts and figures, however what I need isn't available to me, and when I request it I am refused.

I've yet to hear one argument -against- making all the cosmic planes the same other than "We can balance this system". To reiterate, Doing this would mean any oversights in code would be applicable to all organizations, be more easily recognized and spotted, and that data from one raid could reasonable be applied to every plane allowing for easier balancing from the admin side. Nobody could complain that their side is too easy or too hard. this seems like something that would appeal to the admins.

However, on that note, It is quite obvious that the appearance of balance is more important than actual balance, Unless I make an alt in an enemy org, I'll never have first hand knowledge of sphere raids and therefore my opinion will be discounted due to lack of evidence. So it is fruitless for me to attempt to contribute to this conversation. I would like to thank everyone for their input, even if I argued with you, and hopefully you all will continue to try to push for balance.

Not me, miss. I'm an Aeromancer. I do the windy thing. Time? Pssh. Only self-important losers use time. (not you, Sentinels. We <3 you. Those guys over there. With their fancy stoles.)

I see how it is!

As said earlier, think there's tendency to over-react in immediate aftermath. How many times have the Spheres actually fallen? I only know about three times. While I joke about it on La'Saet family channel, and think about how it would be nice to be on assaulting side once in a while, we're hardly being griefed.

If I remember right, Researchers don't lose gem abilities with their deaths either (?), so at the end of the day, only lasting thing left to get "upset" about is how much of the excess of two million power in the Matrix is lost. The people scouring the planes will get bored, spheres will be restored, and things will go back to normal. Don't worry, be happy!

Also, at this point, we're told bugs (Generator ones included hopefully) should be worked out. Nothing should change until we've had a chance to see another raid.

You're exempt. You're a cool one. Have more children.


Yes, yes. I like you too. Bonus points for not being a screeching power-guarder. Cmon dudes, there's plenty, we can lose some without panicking. I think the most annoying thing about the sphere raid aftermath is restoring the shield. the quest and our power quest are freaking horrible to griiiind through, but thankfully, as you said, it doesn't happen often.