Well, if peaced revolts are PvP for you and thus you want PvE, then there is a ton of bashing, questing, astralbashing you can be doing... (those categories include so many things - you can easily lose yourself for hours if that's what you're into!)

Not to mention all the quests. Lusternia has particularly wonderful quests; yet another reason to have an intro quest teach you the basics!

I really don't think IRE is doing anything wrong except for what Sojiro mentioned earlier, maybe they need to work on advertising to broader groups to attract more players.

Lusternia does not require a lot of investment in credits. As Alacardael stated, he has one combat rune in his name. I have almost all of them and I am terrible in combat. They do not make a huge difference. Attaining Demi does more for you than the runes do. As far as the to many high end events and not enough for newbies, that is BS there is enough for newbies to do as it is and still they have their own brackets in almost every event.

I play at non-peak times and often I log in to see an average of 100 players online not counting the Gem of Cloaking people. In a lot of cases I am noticing the player base increase since when I started two years ago. I went for a while where I was seeing less than 50 players online at once. There have been major overhauls in some areas and there are talks of overhauls in other areas. The releasing of new guild also helped bring more players.

All in all, i think that the playerbase is increasing slowly, possibly back to what it was a few years ago as formentioned.

Zilias:

stuff

I totally agree that, for the most part, artifacts are not nessicary for combat, despite what Phantasmal would tell you. What you do need, however, are a number of transed skills (2-3 guild, discipline, combat) in order to have any hope of enter combat as even a low-tier. In addition, you need skills of a decent level to even bash effectively.

I know that many novices are frustrated by slow lesson gain, and the best wayof keeping someone interested in a game it to reward their efforts. Therefore, increasing the amount of level up lessons would keep novices who still aren't sure if they want to buy credits interested longer. The longer you keep novices around, the likely they will buy credits anyway.

foolofsound:

I totally agree that, for the most part, artifacts are not nessicary for combat, despite what Phantasmal would tell you. What you do need, however, are a number of transed skills (2-3 guild, discipline, combat) in order to have any hope of enter combat as even a low-tier. In addition, you need skills of a decent level to even bash effectively.

I know that many novices are frustrated by slow lesson gain, and the best wayof keeping someone interested in a game it to reward their efforts. Therefore, increasing the amount of level up lessons would keep novices who still aren't sure if they want to buy credits interested longer. The longer you keep novices around, the likely they will buy credits anyway.

I really should soften what I mean there. Arti's aren't essential for middie/casual combat, but serious combat requires them unless you're zerging them.

I do agree with you on the lessons thing. Even if gold lesson packs are a non-option, the dichotomy of far more skills and a much higher ceiling means that without a faster rate of lesson gain IGly than other IRE muds, people aren't as likely to stick around. I know that more than a few people I've pointed here haven't stuck around for that exact reason. Nobody wants to get nowhere for a long time, and don't come pre-made with the knowledge of how to perfectly invest the lessons you first recieve in order to snowball into slow-but-steady skill progression involving blitzing demi and farming top-end right off the bat. Especially at the current market prices.

Edit: On a more productive note, I also think we really should put more emphasis on the quest and other world-based potential available. Most of them, with a solid race/archetype, are doable even without major lesson investment. I think that emphasis on that aspect of the game would help with retention, but a widely available sipper/curing system would be needed for that as well.

PhantasmalKiller:

Edit: On a more productive note, I also think we really should put more emphasis on the quest and other world-based potential available. Most of them, with a solid race/archetype, are doable even without major lesson investment. I think that emphasis on that aspect of the game would help with retention, but a widely available sipper/curing system would be needed for that as well.

As well as a better tutorial into how to do quests. I took me a long time and a lot of bothering other players in order to get a good understanding of how to do the various investigative and puzzle actions required for quests.

Estarra:

The death of the Lusternia playerbase has been greatly exaggerated!

As someone who looks at the numbers every month, the playerbase has not been "tanking" and there hasn't been a constant drop off since X event (lack of rants? really?). The figure I look at is total online minutes, not average players online--that's what Mudstats records which isn't the most accurate indicator of activity. It has always been a constant ebb and flow, sometimes the numbers are up and sometimes they're down (we're currently on an upswing).

Indeed, parts of 2010 were very good numbers-wise (yes, we had some of our best months that year), I think a lot of that was two new player orgs and, even so, in many months that year, the activity level wasn't that different (or even lower) than some months in 2011.

I didn't want to imply that it was dying at all, I just was more curious than not. There's been, for lack of a better word, a couple of things that make it appear to be stagnant outside of the game--the slow decline of forum activity and the TopMudSites voting. I was truly interested in that because, I haven't seen a major shift in anything game wise (if anything, I think people have more praise than rants on the latest contributions), but there was an outward appearance of these things.

Incidentally, does Mudstats accurately report the averages--does it include cloaked people and other planar people, because the numbers there seem lower than I expected.

Estarra:
Since we opened, it is like clockwork that the myth pops up every so often that Lusternia is somehow "in trouble" because of the admin, the avenger system, karma, affinity, the conflict system, top orgs, complexity, need for credits, group combat, etc. While I think we can always improve and I always try to look for ways to improve (contrary to popular opinion!), I really don't believe any of the above issues is responsible for the playerbase shrinking because I don't think it really has shrunk in the big picture (taking into account the constant fluxuations).

I understand. I honestly didn't want this to be about "how to improve the game", I was hoping for more people like Shiri to speak up. I kind of put lack of forum activity + voting and mudstats and kind of put two and two together, so I was just curious. (Cloaked gems and the sheer number of people who have them make it hard to see the population). I'm mostly curious that--if people are leaving, what's taking up their time. (I'm curious about how well we do vs. competition, for instance, or in the general market). But I guess I'll chalk it up to more people being quiet OOC here on the forums and such.

I just don't see how novice retention and combat are the same. Lusternia is not (well, it wasn't always!) billed as a game that requires combat in order to excel. Sthai comes to mind, and so do Rancoura, Tully, me for several real life years, and so on. You really have to stop associating a healthy, successful Lusternia career with being able to pick a victim at random and decimate him or her. If that's your gig, so be it-- you may perceive balancing issues to sort out somewhere, but attracting new players isn't the same as creating a virtual bootcamp. Not everyone goes to war (again, consider the writers, the politicians, the ministers, and whoever else chooses to avoid combat).

I also don't really see the point in creating new tutorials for novices to walk through in order to somehow be "on par" with some paragon model of Lusternian to which some of the posters on this thread think everyone should aspire.

I'm not refuting things to be a jerk, guys. I just really think you're looking at truly obscure and, sorry for this, pointless things that WILL affect players later on, but it isn't really helpful to look at that stuff when we're having trouble keeping real newbies around for reasons that stretch beyond lesson gain and perceived combatant impotency.


Lusternia is a roleplaying game. Denying that is futile. To prove my point, I refer you to literally every novice helpfile in the game. I guarantee that at some point, they're going to tell newbies to read the laws, to "be respectful" of other people, or to "look around and get to know the place." These are not direct quotes and the phrasing is purposefully simple in this example so that I can avoid having to dig into actual help files, but you can at least see what I'm talking about. These are the things that we're telling newbies to focus on. These are also some of the most befuddling (and in my opinion, exciting) aspects of the game that true newbies cling to.

Again, though, and as foolsofsound has indicated, everyone plays for different reasons. Some newbies hop out and immediately want to kill things because of the experiences they've had playing other games (pretty much anything on an xBox is grizzly, and that's just the new generation's MO). Other newbies want to languidly frolic through a dreamworld meadow and chitchat with people in pretty textual dresses. Still other newbies want to learn how to be one of a nation's saving graces and take up all the things I talked about in my last post (and those are the newbies that Glomdoring, at least, focuses on retaining).

I guess my point is-- if you are only concerned about the mechanics that will make your character bigger/stronger/scarier/more formidable, and if this is the presentation of Lusternia you're giving every new player, you're going to miss out on the incredible people (like Rancoura, Talan, Astraea, Xiran, and so on) who actually do the shaping and the molding of Lusternia's mythos (when it isn't being God driven).

Just some food for thought!

I'm still waiting to transform into Shuyin.

The point of a role playing game means that it is important to be able to back up your RP with mechanics; otherwise you could just go to a chat room to the same effect. Honestly, from a business perspective, those players who do enjoy conflict mechanics are more important, as they are the ones who are willing to buy credits. Besides, unless you have the mechanic capacity to back up roleplay, like driving out intruders or slowly tainting the world, most RP is ultimately ineffectual and pointless. So yes, in a game, as opposed to a RP chatroom, the mechanics are certainly something that needs to be examined in order to keep new players, and to say anything else means ignoring at least half of the game, including novices. This is especially true with the marketing strategy IRE is going with, advertising conflict mechanics and interesting combat, along with RP.

foolofsound:

The point of a role playing game means that it is important to be able to back up your RP with mechanics; otherwise you could just go to a chat room to the same effect. Honestly, from a business perspective, those players who do enjoy conflict mechanics are more important, as they are the ones who are willing to buy credits.

The basis of this statement is true (combatants buy credits), however the claim of it is false (combatants aren't the only people who buy sizeable credits, and I'd even suspect they're not the majority of sizeable credit buyers). At least, that's always been my impression.

@foolsofsound

Right. I didn't say any of that because it's just obvious that the goal of Lusternia, from a business perspective, is to entice people into purchasing things. That was never really a question!

The hang up on the word "mechanics" wasn't expected, and so maybe my point will make more sense if you sub "mechanics" for "add-ons."

Edit: You will also note that I never said our gang of combat hounds weren't important. In fact, in my other post, I lump myself into the "beginning to care about combat" category, and I keep facetiously alluding to my inevitable transformation into Shuyin when my artifact chrysalis cracks open and I finally see Nirvana. I don't know where you got that weird dichotomy from, but it just sort of proves that there's a one track mindedness going on here... Yoda would not like that!

As a fairly recent addition, I can't support Druken's post enough.

It's only been lately, post level 60 or so, that I've felt a lesson crunch and desire for credits, as everyone expects people to tri-trans as soon as possible. I easily had enough to get by so far, but it's become more difficult — I realize that's the point, but it's not the mechanics that are at issue here. It's the combat-culture that kind of makes us on the lower-end of players feel like we can't really participate until we're demis or trans, which ever comes first.

Even trades are hard for newbies because people want transcendent and artied craftsmen — or, maybe that's not true. But that's how it feels, sometimes, when you're only an Adept! So even if you're a non-combatant (and I'm pretty firmly a non-combatant) there's a place where you begin to fall behind.

It just feels like there's a pressure on newbies to be "useful" and combative as soon as they can be, instead of letting them figure out for themselves what they want to be. I speak for myself, I guess, but I know that's what affected "retention rate" where I was concerned. Azureus is my... I've lost count. 5th character? 6th? but it's my first time sticking around long enough to feel like I'm actually a member of my organizations. People in Hallifax are starting to recognize Azureus, or at least I like to think so.

But through those attempts and false-starts, there's been frustrations. Sometime's it's been because people assumed I was an experienced player's alt (since, by my third time trying, I knew the rudimentary communication/emoting skills) and so wouldn't explain things properly. Or a feeling that GR1 is enough to send someone out on their own and stop volunteering information unless it's asked; maybe that's true for some players, even new ones, but it won't be true of everyone. Sure there are plenty of things for newbies to do! But the newbies aren't always told what those things are — and I condemn myself in that, too. I've done a poor job as a collegium instructor lately.

Mechanics and RP and the conflict/interaction between the two are a long and involved debate across the entire RPG hobby, whether it's D&D or Vampire the Masquerade or WoW's RP realms, and so it is in Lusternia too. So naturally people will have different and diverse opinions on it, all of which are valid, and it's not like we can solve that problem here. But a newbie may not even have an opinion on the matter yet, and there's again that pressure to be "useful" in some way. Consider tertiary selection. Every time I've asked what my tertiary skill should be, I always got a combat-based response.

In Azureus's case, I had a choice between Psionics, Dreamweaving, and Runes. When I asked advice on picking, I was told that Dreamweaving is useless at killing people and that Psionics was the only viable combat choice. That was certainly something to take into consideration, but it wasn't the complete answer to my question. Considering the link between RP and mechanics, I do try to role-play my class. I am a mage and role-play a mage. Tertiary really determines what "kind" of mage you are. What even is a Dream-mage, lorewise? I still don't know, and no one whom I've asked has been able to answer me either. It certainly sounds interesting, and if I had chosen it I'd have tried to use my skills to aid my role-play however I could, as well as their "actual" uses.

(In the end, I chose Runes, because I thought there'd be some interesting dovetail between being both a Runist and a Jeweller, and being able to role-play Azureus approaching both with a similar mindset. Of course, I then discovered I was apparently the only Runemage in all of Hallifax, and so instantly there was pressure for me to be a Transcendent Runist and supply the city with runes. I focused on it for a while, but I couldn't keep up and am still hovering around Master. People have stopped asking me how my Runes are coming.)

I hope I don't sound bitter about this, because I'm not. I love Lusternia and I feel I'm coming ever closer to finding a niche I'm comfortable playing in. But having constantly been the genuine new player who almost got away, I guess I care more about what we as a player base can do to help people stick around.

I'm still of the mind that there should be a more obvious mechanical link between effort and reward, especially at the lower levels. Increasing lesson gain, especially early on, would allow new players to feel as though they are growing as character, as they gain new skills and functionality quickly. Further, it allows those players from the more traditional MMO market, players whos tastes lie in mechanics, to enter what ultimately many of them are drawn to the game for; intelligent, tactical combat.

The roleplay aspect of the game cannot be denied, and the need for older players to help induct novices into the roleplay of the game is a certainty, but ultimately, a common complaint amongst lost novices is the complexity of the game. Introducing novices more slowly to both the RP and mechanics by way of lengthened introduction would allow new players to begin feeling comfortable with the game without feeling that they are in some way harassing older players (older players who are rude to novices don't exactly help either).

I love exploring Lusternia, learning the lore, and taking part in the narrative of the game but, because Lusternia is a game, there is a need for a certain level of mechanical strength in order to take part in the conflict storylines, virtually any quest, or even traveling to certain areas. Denying this to players who aren't willing to make a fairly heavy investment into the game is not a good way to keep novices around, especially since it is so easy to level your way through the things that don't require said investment.

I'm not saying that every player needs to bash up to demigod and buy a thousand dollars worth of credits within a week of joining in order to enjoy the game, but it cannot be denied that a serious draw of games for many, many people (see: entire mainsteam MMO audience) is the steady increase in power of your character, and the unlocking of new content. I feel that somewhat more of this content should be made available, in order to make sure young players are hooked on the game by the time credits are required. Players already addicted to the game part with thier money much more easily. I feel that the best way to do this is make lessons more readily available, if no through gold purchase, then through level up, if not through level up, then as one time rewards for quests. Making enough lessons available to put a character at least about 2/3 up all their guild skills would give new players a more serious investment in thier character (the more developed a character is, the more a player is unwilling to abandon their effort because of a little thing like money).

I agree that players certainly could do more to keep new players interested, especially since new players are very much at the mercy of thier org mates. I also believe that there are a number of mechanical changes that cna be implemented in order to enhance retention. The problem with making the solution player based is that there is no way to force unpleasant and impatient people (and all orgs have some) to be more helpful, and there are only so many people willing to be helpful in general, even if it does promote the health of the game. Certainly players should do thier best to help retain novices, more so than now, but mechanical changes that supplement that are a material improvement that relies far less on human nature.

I could support extra lessons for new characters. How feasible is it though? From what I've seen, there's a uniform "level up" schema across the IREs. Maybe if there were more achievements? Or Bound Credits given out in similar fashion when you reach org-milestones, like graduation with honors or completing noviceship, the way they're given out for level-milestones now?

I don't mean to imply that retention is all on us and that the admins or mechanics can't do things to help it. I'm only trying to point out that it's everyone's responsibility. I've been talking about Lusternia a fair bit to my other friends, asking them to look over designs or talking about how satisfying it's been to join an Order. But while I'd love to bring people with me, I'd always wonder if they would get good experiences with their guilds (I'm not going to force all my friends to join the Aeromancers after all). And I'd feel responsible for anyone I invited, and it's tricky to ensure they'll be greeted/oriented properly, short of being in the same room with them when they made their character and maybe having my laptop handy for Azureus to be around.

Azureus:

I could support extra lessons for new characters. How feasible is it though? From what I've seen, there's a uniform "level up" schema across the IREs. Maybe if there were more achievements? Or Bound Credits given out in similar fashion when you reach org-milestones, like graduation with honors or completing noviceship, the way they're given out for level-milestones now?

Lusternia does have more skills than at least some of the other IRE games (granted, my experience with the other games is limited), so maybe there could be talk of scaling level up lesson gain to the higher total amount required.

I would also love for there to be an "Collegium Graduation Quest" that both taught useful questing and bashing skills and gave out a nice pile of lessons or bound credits for starting characters (full description of such a thing several posts back).

To say nothing of the fact that, in my experience, the achievement for graduating with honours tends to be glitched.

Phred:


I kind of put lack of forum activity + voting and mudstats and kind of put two and two together, so I was just curious.

I think drop in forum activity is related to the huge surge on the FB group! As for TMS voting, we're not longer pushing that strongly (an IRE decision).

I have skimmed over this and I will also admit it seems like the game has been somewhat in a slump as of late (however, taking in that we just got past the holidays, for school students (yes collage too) just got past finals and going back to school in the past two weeks or so. Coupled with that we really cannot see people who have the gem of cloaking either, it defiantly LOOKS like there are less people around than normal.

Looks can be deceiving, look at the events for ascension, it still draws the crowd, I know last night in Knowledge we has at LEAST 120 people online. That said some of the other things I have seen mentioned.

Top Organizations and alliances – being on the losing end, being noncom, it is frustrating so I can only imagine what it is like for those who are combat savvy and go and try to do things only to be swat right back down then stomped into the ground. I invited a friend to this game before the holidays, they were enjoying it and learning the layout and all that until they stepped one room into Gaudiguch and was killed on sight. They quit and have not been back since. I can raise the question how many other actually newbies has this happened to? I have also pulled several newbies out of villages because certain organizations think it is a good idea to set statues against everyone but them and a certain clan, meaning these statues are hitting novices. The way statues are turned is an in game problem and personal, that is why said organizations lose so many statues, we go and rip them down, thanks for the marble!

I do have some questions however that I never really understood and it sort of spans all the IRE games. First being the credits gained at certain intervals of level gained. Why does it stop at level 70 and also nothing is given at 65 either? I never really understood this and it would seem gaining the higher levels should garner MORE reward for achieving them because they are harder to get.

The lessons. We used to be able to gamble with them, so we actually had a use in them if say we didn’t need them. Now, there is nothing what so ever we can do with lessons if we have everything transcended and even what we can flex (I have heard a few players with this problem, I am not among them). We have lesson sales that are done with OOC purchases, why not have a lesson market or, give a way to convert lessons into bound credits (even if it costs a bit more than what a credit is worth), or something.

And on one last final note, those who feel that “need” credits other than what can be gotten though IG means, there are a LOT of other ways, most notably the bardic and Artisianl contests that is held monthly! (Thank you very much for that because most of the other IRE games do not hold theirs monthly). Estarra has also more recently started doing these muzzles, notices are posted on Facebook, if you are competitive and good at puzzles, 50 credits if you can answer first whatever is being asked for :)

Regarding forum activity, the removal of the Rants board also comes to mind. I'm not saying that it's a good/bad thing, but you can't deny that the Rants board had a very sizable share of forum activity.

Which went immediately into Tweets (then Twits) with no substantial loss in activity for a long time before the facebook thing became popular (and the forum downgrade.)