Wasn't there a thread a while back where ideas were thrown around for a conflict mechanic that would encourage shifting alliances?

Shifting alliances absolutely HAS to be something that the playerbase wants before it is done. If the admin forcefully dissolve alliances, players will simply migrate to other orgs in order to play the game with the people they like. It happened in Achaea, making Ashtan more of a power-house and killing Mhaldor.

In saying that, I'm not sure what can be done to encourage more conflict. Since I came back, I've seen none at all. There was something in Celest's logs about a war domoth. I assume that is a mechanically enforced combat feature. But, where are the zealot warriors of light who form groups, go out, and eradicate the taint? See, that is what I'd like to see. Something player-driven, not wargames that are driven by mechanics. It all boils down to stagnancy and apathy.

Games with strong centers of conflict and motivated players who actually participate in the conflict flourish much more so than games that sit stagnant.

Now, don't get me wrong; I'm not trying to insult any of you here. You're a great bunch, and I enjoy talking to some of you. But, that seems to be all that goes on - talk.

Lusternia has so much potential it's sickening. The amount of features you have here is enormous. We should use it.

But, where are the zealot warriors of light who form groups, go out, and eradicate the taint?


Been there, done that. It just causes rage and claims of "griefing" *shrug*

War domoth is a conflict mechanism very similar to villages in many ways. It becomes open for capture, you go up and do group combat (or not), capture it, and get benefits for your org. It's more complicated than villages, and for key parts of it, only demigods+ can participate. Single or very small groups of people generally have no chance taking a domoth, especially if none of them are ascendants, unless they are totally unopposed.


As for people going out on war bands and just killing anyone from X org because they are zealots... no. No, let's not, please. Let's look at another game that has more RP based PK rules (that work better, IMO). To kill someone, you either need to be participating in an ongoing struggle (similar to being at a domoth, or village, when they are in play), or you need to have a reason to actually want that individual person dead. Saying 'I just hate everyone, and therefore want everyone dead' is not an acceptable reason, and REALLY isn't healthy for the game. The Avenger rules make anyone absolutely free PK without recourse anywhere off prime (which I dislike), but that doesn't mean that we should go out ganking random people, that's not good PK either...



I think that what's causing a lot of people to find PK dry and stale is that there is no point to the sort of PK you describe. You can go on that crazy war band to kill random people of X org, but why? They don't lose anything, you don't gain anything. On prime, there isn't really any chance of reprisals (you just go back to your org fortress, or hide behind Avenger mechanics) against you, so no additional PK is really done. Anywhere else, you're not likely to shut down and kill anyone without being yourself shut down (with distort on all the upper planes) and yourself killed or just waited out.

For any sort of meaningful conflict system, villages/domoths/aetherflares/wildnodes/Smob killing, you really require a critical mass of both people available and skill. No amount of organization and trying hard will surpass overwhelming odds, which is appropriate. That leads to people not going in the first place, which leads to less people skilled later, which leads to less people going later, and so on.

The reason that people are lobbying here for an alliance change is that it will shift the only thing that can really break that loop, the overwhelming odds. For the most part, it's not really acceptable to shift the mechanics of these conflicts in a way that would fix things. Some of them could definitely (IMO) do with changes or overhauls, but that wouldn't fix this particular issue.


EDIT: And one reason we're talking about admins stepping in at all is that the vast majority of our characters only have tenuous reasons to want to break alliances. We can fairly easily fabricate more and more vague reasons, but unless someone throws themselves under the bus in a major way, there isn't any IC reason to break the status quo for the 'winning' faction. If a god provides some reason (besides ew, taint, ew wyrd) to do something, we'd have more call to act. Like an event in which an ally does something incredibly questionable, and your previous enemy takes the same stance as you on it.

We've got plenty of topics about what's asphyxiating Lusternia. Player dilution, the current political milieu, expensive artifacts, complex curing, etc. The sum of these have essentially chased away some of the most prominent players or at least significantly scaled down activity in recent months--even weeks--myself included.

There's not a lot of draw power to get old players to come back, and there's too much of a curve for new players to join.

Draylor:


Been there, done that. It just causes rage and claims of "griefing" *shrug*

I almost never agree with Draylor, but this is pretty true.

There's no getting around it. There's a lot of IC/OOC (metagaming) complaints directed towards combatants. Ironically, the staunchest opponents happen to be griefers themselves (don't like the taste of their own medicine).

Even if you promote conflict to upregulate player activity, you still have to address attitudes toward player combat in general. The implementation of stiffer penalties has drastically reduced 'griefing'. This is actually a good thing for the game. However, there's little to no reward for participating in combat outside orchestrated conflict mechanics. Which creates a bit of a paradox.

I know many people have boycotted one of the more distinct conflict mechanics--Domoths--for one reason or another (e.g., absolve, lol zergs, cleaning mold off bathroom tiles). Yes, Celest bags itself a domoth regularly. But it's not actually any sort of feat. Just ask Kelly. They basically only die to fail curing when overrun by mob spawns.

It's sitting AFK in a manse or influencing guards or running through bashing trash on prime for the majority of us. And lately, people have stopped even bothering to AFK, or influence, or bash. Because there's not a lot of incentive to monotonously grind.

There's no dungeon raids. There's no rare item drops. Just gold which has been inflated to be worth almost nothing; leading to a divergent conversation on the hilarity of the credit market.

There's basically MUD sex and OOC clans. That's what you get at the end of the day.

Sorry for the double post.

On the topic of conflict... One thing that I think stifles conflict is the rather high threshold to get into it. I've already posted about it in other topics, but Green/Gedulah is more or less a prerequisite to get into any kind of combat (which is about 300 lessons in, or 50 credits). That's a sizeable chunk of the free lessons you get. Add in guild skills and other "very good to have" skills (like Metawake, Conglutinate, Resilience), and you need to invest a lot into skills to even start fighting. That's not including all the herbs and potions you'll need. I've at times considered making an alt to get some combat experience, but the sheer amount of lessons and items I need is just too daunting to even try, to be honest.

There's also the problem of a lack of good raiding spots. Want to raid Prime cities? Hefty XP loss, no real way to actually get in if you're enemied, no real way to get out if you're not (since you'll become enemied right away). Elemental? Distort makes it impossible to escape unless you've got an aethership waiting. Same for Cosmic. The only places you can raid and be able to get out is EtherGlom/EtherSeren. Prime forests also works, since they can't really put guards at 20+ entrances as opposed to the 4'ish entrances of cities, I guess.

Lesson of the day: griefing is way more fun for the griefers than the griefed. What's the best way to deal with aggressors? Becoming an aggressor, not a defender.

and you need to invest a lot into skills to even start fighting

I've been up in the Havens for a long time and as a player I had more fun with RP than with combat, so perhaps there's a disconnect there between how I remember it and the current reality. I didn't have an artifact to my name, only 3 trans skills and a very basic curing system. I still recall joining in plenty of times with group combat and the occasional one-on-one when I came across someone near my level. I certainly died a lot, but I still got some good hits in and usually ended up ahead.

So my question is: Is that just impossible now? If so, why? Or when people say it's a huge investment to "start fighting" do they mean it's a huge investment to continuously win?

There's also the problem of a lack of good raiding spots. Want to raid Prime cities? Hefty XP loss, no real way to actually get in if you're enemied, no real way to get out if you're not (since you'll become enemied right away). Elemental? Distort makes it impossible to escape unless you've got an aethership waiting. Same for Cosmic. The only places you can raid and be able to get out is EtherGlom/EtherSeren. Prime forests also works, since they can't really put guards at 20+ entrances as opposed to the 4'ish entrances of cities, I guess.

Again, perhaps I'm wrong, but I think most people enjoy the relative safety of the prime cities. Should they really be much easier to attack? Is the possibility of not being able to get out that big a discouragement to try? Are the penalties associated with death that severe?

Prime cities are safe, but forests aren't, that makes me sadface.

Re: skill investment: I had an alt perhaps a RL year ago that I seriously tried getting into combat with. I was told repeatedly that without Green/Gedulah, I'd simply never be able to win against anyone semi-competent. Without Metawake, I'd be very vulnerable against sleep-classes, to the point where winning would be more or less impossible. And even so, "only three trans skills" is still a lot more than you can get today without buying credits OOCly (especially with todays credit market). I can certainly understand that unless you have three trans skills and a few others at Expert/Gifted, you'd be at a disadvantage, but it shouldn't be impossible.

Re: safety of prime: I agree, Prime should be relatively safe. It was more to point out that for cities, Prime is the only plane you can actually exit even if it's distorted. If they distort Elemental/Cosmic, you simply can't get out without an aethership. Period. No transverse, no running, no teleport, nothing. Makes it rather pointless to raid there then...

EDIT: And to spin off Enyalida's point above, there is a rather huge difference when it comes to City vs. Forest raiding. Forests simply can't guard all its entrances, so pretty much anyone can enter without any real problem, enemied or not. The same goes for Ethereal; even if they're enemied, and even if we distort, they can just... leave.

So my question is: Is that just impossible now? If so, why? Or when people say it's a huge investment to "start fighting" do they mean it's a huge investment to continuously win?

It's mostly the latter. Which leads to your last question: Are the penalties associated with death that severe?

It's complicated. As you know, most enemy planes are distortable (free discretionary with construct at times). Add in the risk of losing almost 2 million essence per death. It's hard to summon the desire to raid offplane. In an effort to elucidate my point with some context:

Each time I want to fight offplane for fun must be calculated with the risk of massive essence loss. You are looking at a solid 2-4 hours of nonstop bashing to recover what may take seconds to lose. The opportunity cost is too high.

One solution would be to disallow instant ressing on enemy planes. Depending on the rate of dying offplane, there would be a commensurate amount of respawn time. That is, the more often you die in an enemy plane, the longer it will take for you to respawn EACH time. Then, drastically cut the essence loss per death.

Nocht:
I didn't have an artifact to my name, only 3 trans skills and a very basic curing system. I still recall joining in plenty of times with group combat and the occasional one-on-one when I came across someone near my level. I certainly died a lot, but I still got some good hits in and usually ended up ahead.

So my question is: Is that just impossible now? If so, why? Or when people say it's a huge investment to "start fighting" do they mean it's a huge investment to continuously win?

When I started playing Lusternia, transing a skill cost around 1,715,000 gold, as credits on the market could be purchased regularly in the neighbourhood of 6,000 gold per. Today, you're looking at 5,716,666 gold for that same skill, with credits at 20,000 gold per.

That's 17,150,000 gold just for guild skills.

Unless you spend an ungodly amount of time bashing, these days, paying for credits/lessons/etc. with IRL money is more of a requirement than it is an "added bonus".

Personally, if today was my first day in Lusternia, I wouldn't bother.

Lothringen, that is just to be competitive. I interpreted the question by Nocht to reflect attitudes towards participating in combat. Which is as I said in my post above: it's a multi-faceted issue. You can theoretically just join a zerg and kill something using basic curing and primitive skills. That's participating in combat. You certainly won't be competitive, but Nocht alluded to that with the tail end of his question.

But, people stay and play when they can have fun. Losing isn't fun. Like Lothringen said, if I joined as a true newbie today, I wouldn't even make it past a week. I'd find somewhere else to play.

Let's do some math... At level 70, you've gotten a total of 1100 lessons through levels and bound credits. We start by tossing 300 lessons into Lowmagic to get Green. That leaves us with 800 lessons. Then another 200 in Discipline to get Metawake. Down to 600. Then most guilds tells you to put about 100 lessons into Planar and other misc. non-guild skills. 500 lessons left. That will get us half-way to Virtuoso in a single guildskill, or to Gifted in two guildskills, and with that few lessons, there's really nothing you can do to win any kind of fight... The only solution is to get credits through the credit market (which right now only has 126 credits in it; not even enough to go from Virtuoso to Transcendent, even if you had all that gold) or buy them OOCly. And being more or less forced to buy OOC credits to get started in fighting is... well, IMO, bad.

And the above example assumes Lowmagic. If you're using Highmagic, you'd need 600 lessons to get Gedulah, which leaves you with... 200 lessons into guild skills. Yeah.

You don't actually need green/gedulah. It's certainly something desirable, but not necessary. Locks are difficult enough to land with competent curing in small group combat. In large-scale combat, if you get locked, you're probably going to die before you can cure out anyways. Sometimes, locking isn't even necessary, just hindering to prevent them from running, bal/eq loss.

Also, metawake is good, but it's not really even necessary 99% of the time.

And being more or less forced to buy OOC credits to get started in fighting is... well, IMO, bad.

Again, my question is do you really need all that to just begin fighting? Is it truly impossible for you to participate in any combat without those things?

I was actually greenlocked regularly in the arena when I tried my hand on combat. It might not be needed if you've got plenty of Resilience to avoid those poisons, but with inept Resilience, I regularly got greenlocked in two or three hits. Could my curing system be better? I suppose it could be; but when you're basically hit with most, if not all, afflictions at the same time, it doesn't really matter how good it is...

Nocht:


Again, my question is do you really need all that to just begin fighting? Is it truly impossible for you to participate in any combat without those things?

As far as I can tell, unless you're keen on fighting without any chance of winning or even escaping, yes.

I was actually greenlocked regularly in the arena when I tried my hand on combat. It might not be needed if you've got plenty of Resilience to avoid those poisons, but with inept Resilience, I regularly got greenlocked in two or three hits. Could my curing system be better? I suppose it could be; but when you're basically hit with most, if not all, afflictions at the same time, it doesn't really matter how good it is...

So the problem is a bit more complicated as you stated yourself. You need to have better parry/stancing and you need higher resilience. If you're getting regularly locked and need to constantly green, it's not going to save you. It costs eq and it requires 3p. You're going to die through sheer attrition regardless.