"'Cause the fighting don't stop till I walk in." -Synkarin's Lament.
4
Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
What Synkarin said.
While I'm fully aware I'm directly responsible for Shuck, I think he's totally fine in the context of the other champ pets, but collectively they are all too strong. I'd prefer to see them all significantly changed. Maybe just 500 damage a round or some such. Nothing big or significant to game balance, but still keep them around because they are cool.
I love that sides get different powers, and think it's a good thing.
Unfortunately, it can lead to one side completely not understanding how the other side's skills work, and then they run crying to the admin/envoys asking for nerfs when it doesn't actually work the way they think it does.
(I've seen those both sides of the conflict lines do this, I'm not pointing fingers at anyone.)
I love that sides get different powers, and think it's a good thing.
Unfortunately, it can lead to one side completely not understanding how the other side's skills work, and then they run crying to the admin/envoys asking for nerfs when it doesn't actually work the way they think it does.
(I've seen those both sides of the conflict lines do this, I'm not pointing fingers at anyone.)
I've said this on Peasantface, but I guess it's semi-relevant to the discussion at hand but kind off-topic to the thread. Regardless, I feel it's a good lesson for everyone to learn:
Firstly, if I had the ability to install an electrical shock to someone's keyboard whenever the typed the words 'overpowered' and 'nerf' around, I'd love to do so immensely. Those words are thrown around like candy and rarely offer anything of substance towards discussions relating to abilities. I try to avoid use them whenever possible when discussing "balance".
Also, and this is the big one: just because an ability or skill is powerful, that doesn't mean it's too powerful. It's more than likely just competitive. If you lose, was it directly JUST because of that one ability? 90% of the time, I can guarantee that it isn't the case. If an ability or skill lacks reasonable and fair counterplay or offers a medium towards pursuing victory that is substantially easier than all other mediums, you can have a case for it being too powerful. However, in the interest of producing something of value towards a "balance discussion", you should offer reasonable solutions. Reasonable does not include: delete the skill outright or provide it with an effect so miniscule that it no longer challenges you in the slightest. Unfortunately, "balance" is subjective and it always will be as everyone has different opinions as to what can make the game better and that's okay. However, I've read a lot of envoy comments that included red herring, straight up deletion requests with nothing of substance to back it up, ad hominum, false equivalency, loaded questions, strawman, and burden of proof fallacies.
I really recommend that, the next time you die or lose to someone, don't immediately point the finger at a skill or ability. Rather, ask yourself if there is anything you personally could've done to prevent it. If you come to the very difficult conclusion that there is nothing you reasonably could've done in terms of counterplay, then start coming up with solutions to fix them. If you'd like a really good video that explains game balance rather well, there's one here:
I do think this champion pets are cool. It might be fun to have 'class champions' as commune/city wide offices. It could add some interesting RP and politics as to which faction gets to nab the most champion spots too.
The one issue I had with the Champion pets is that they are very much a 'win more' mechanic. This already puts the 'top tier' further above others, and makes breaking your way in that much harder.
Do the champion pets have to be better? Can't they just be cool looking versions of ents? Like, the Nil Grim Horror just being an awesome looking normal archdemon?
This is a good idea for the guardians/wiccans. Reskin one of the pets to a legendary and historic creature, who has some custom emotes and maybe is even sometimes possessed by a god. Allowing unique RP enhancement to the champion.
For warriors it could be some ancient warrior spirit that would possess their weapons. This would also have some custom flavor lines / a history.
Mages could get a special amulet with a backstory.
Bards I think should get something like a parrot on their shoulder, different song birds for each guild.
Monks could get access to a unique meditation chamber or something. The same one that hero x used.
Anyway, there are a million options, but just making them flavor items that grant the champ rescue is ideal.
Take great care of yourselves and each other.
1
Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
edited January 2016
The awkward part of that idea is people shift classes, so would the artifact change with them? Maybe not even an issue.
Can maybe even do just seperate it from the class entirely and just be rescue+maybe a rezz power+cool loyal that has no combat functionality.
PS: Lol at that video. League of Legends (and Dota 2) do not have a fluid meta as that video is trying to argue with an evolving counter pick strategy. The understanding of counterpicks happens within the first month following the patch release, and then you see the same picks over and over from a pool of meta heroes (and the occasional one offs) until the next patch comes out and changes the meta.
They do this to drive profitability, WoW does the same thing. It's a great idea for profit, it's a terrible idea for game balance. "Balanced imbalance" is a hilarious way to describe it though. Intentional temporary imbalance to force people to invest in the new meta might be the more accurate term. Let's absolutely never bring that model to Lusternia.
- Focus novicehood and ranks into collegiums, make them the center of learning that they were suppose to be.
- Keep the classes as is, You'll still be a wet aquamancer or a tree-loving hartstone, even if your Org name is no longer an exact copy.
- If people still insist on a direct link to their class, then just introduce a new Channel (CLASS <msg> ?) where you can speak to others of your class, for whatever reason.
That aside, on to Coalitions.
Frankly a lot of the same crap has been repeatedly said over time, so I wont say it as well, but it seems people are uncomfortable with the idea of being slapped with a new system and told to "get used to it". If people want more flexibility, then how about suggesting the idea of the players forming the coalitions themselves? Hopefully it wont be too horrible or bland, but eh.
1
Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
I know it's a little late, but man it's funny listening to Celina talk about anything related to balance.
Add to my list of grudges and generic dislike. Ultimately, what I say either stands or does not stand on its own merits. Not because someone doesn't think I'm fair as a person, maybe I'm literally the flaming gay son of Satan. So far the admin and players seem to generally agree with what I report on!
I think this is brilliant. I've been poking around on an alt and I have yet to meet someone in my guild. I was just thinking that the real issue was too many guilds, not so much too many cities or too few players.
Anyway, I don't have anything constructive to add, but as an old player hoping to come back and discouraged by how quiet things seem, I like this.
28 guilds is way too much. Even Achaea, with their far higher population, only has 17 Houses (guild equivalent). Reading this thread, and knowing that at least two other IREs (Achaea and Imperian) have trimmed and consolidated organizations, Lusternia already has examples to follow on what to do and not to do, and I believe the Admin team can execute this well.
I think this is brilliant. I've been poking around on an alt and I have yet to meet someone in my guild. I was just thinking that the real issue was too many guilds, not so much too many cities or too few players.
Anyway, I don't have anything constructive to add, but as an old player hoping to come back and discouraged by how quiet things seem, I like this.
Oi, where have you been?!?!?
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
I think this is brilliant. I've been poking around on an alt and I have yet to meet someone in my guild. I was just thinking that the real issue was too many guilds, not so much too many cities or too few players.
Anyway, I don't have anything constructive to add, but as an old player hoping to come back and discouraged by how quiet things seem, I like this.
I'd like to add that I hope organizations gain the ability, whenever we get this guild overhaul, to determine how many guilds that we want. Glomdoring could subsist off of two guilds, honestly. One that exemplifies spreading the Wyrd by force and subversion (which could be patroned by Crow and based off of him) and the other based off of enriching the Wyrd culturally, internally, and bringing everyone together (patroned by Night, sort of). This is combining both my ideas and Crek's ideas.
Two guilds would really be good for Glomdoring in my opinion. Other organizations could probably have more than two, but I think healthy populations split between two would be good for some organizations.
What are the chances that skills won't require a certain power sources to use power abilities. Example being the 'Boost' ability in Tahtetso is 5 power but it can only come from the Pool of Stars (Power: 5 (Pool of Stars)). Is that going to change too? Or will archetypes be 'locked' to the cities they're in still?
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Nilofer says, "Xena is here, riding Xena, the Xenaesque Xena. She is wielding Xena in both of her hands."
Archetypes are not locked to organizations. Classes are. I can't see any reason for that to change. Just because the Paladin guild does not exist any more, the Paladin class is still inextricably linked to New Celest.
Ewwwwww! I know I'm a rather new face here in ways. I've played Lusternia a few times over, as have I all IRE games and spent a fair amount in each. Hear me out for a second at least. I know not everyone will agree, but hopefully it's not too late to chuck my own two cents in before any irreversible or regrettable damage is done. I know for myself and possibly many others here, Lusternia's main attraction was it's robust lore and individuality.
A little back ground on why i think this is bad: This same thing actually happened recently in achaea and imo as well as quite a few others this was one of the worst things to happen. What ended up is a lot of lore and built roleplay just vanished to become no more. In it's place you ended up with 2-3 very generic houses/guilds which offered up the exact same thing for each city/commune with minor factional flavor changes obviously stemming from the factional RP. Each however felt rather soulless and lacked individuality making it all rather bland where as prior each guild/house albeit empty had immense depth with lore built up over years which sometimes was all it took to seal a fate or turn away another. The problem of some being empty and others more robust was present, but it could have been handled better rather than stripping the uniqueness away in a globbed on bandaid fix.
Proposed fix: The covens idea which seems like it was meant to fix this, but it seems it only binds TWO guilds together which is at a fault if both guilds are near empty. However, why not just modify the coven into this exact thing leaving guilds intact, but change the covens into a sort of coalition that encompasses the idea of 3 generalized types: Religious, Political, Military or what have you.
Conclusion: This may be less work on the staff to append an existing fix as well as safeguarding the individuality and lore provided by each guild. Then have the player choose which coalition upon completing the tutorial. Much less to change and the same effect is granted of pulling everyone of similar interest together. Adding a coalition channel would also help, i do realize it adds yet another layer, but my interest is really in preserving that which is uniquely Lusternia.
TLDR: Rather than strip away guilds and erase all of that history and lore, ammend Covens to encompass the three generalized areas, add a channel for it and let the player choose after the tutorial.
Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
Achaea literally split up the guilds into "fighters," "priests," and "scholars/politicians," which is absolutely very bland. Our overhaul is not that. Achaea's motivation was also different than ours, they do not have a population spread issue. If some houses were empty, it was because they were not appealing, but they had the population to support the house volume they had. Though they seem similar on the surface, the processes are a bit apples and oranges.
The problem with Covens was not in how it failed to resolve what it aimed to resolve. They really did exactly what they set out to do, more people were around to help newcomers. It didn't fundamentally resolve the population spread issue, notably because it was never designed to.
Alright, as long as it's not that I'm interested. Achaea's guild overhaul was just abysmal to the point that hearing we're scrapping and consolidating made my heart sink. Anything but that.
I think there has been acknowledgement from the start that this process is counterproductive if it dilutes the uniqueness of each org's RP and completely disregard what the individual guilds have made of themselves
Your concern is a fair one, since I agree that Achaea's current House situation is less than inspired. But if you look at some of the threads in the overhaul subforums that people have been contributing to I think you'll see that player input is important and there's a concerted effort to make these new guilds engaging and distinctive.
Yeah, I am catching up on that and seeing there is a lot more player input here. I was simply concerned it was taking cue from the more populated sister game at first. My main concern was keeping the lore and roleplay with the changes, which has made for a fun and unforgettable experience.
Thank you to those who have been polite and brought me into the fold to see it's not going to be like that here. It's what really drew me in initially and lead to me coming back again and eventually going all in to stay. With all of this information, I'm behind the idea of it, knowing we will not just be scrapping everything to start over with no solid rp reason or connections to the history of the guilds. I would be heartbroken if it was just another "Tada! Now you all are one!" kind of deal.
I have a feeling the admins will be able to pull this off with a nice event rather than just slapping on. I heard they did a big event just to add a few new abilities in Dreamweaving, so...
I think this is brilliant. I've been poking around on an alt and I have yet to meet someone in my guild. I was just thinking that the real issue was too many guilds, not so much too many cities or too few players.
Anyway, I don't have anything constructive to add, but as an old player hoping to come back and discouraged by how quiet things seem, I like this.
Ditto.
I haven't read much past the first page, but I loved the Hallifax idea put forward and I'm really excited/curious about how this pans out.
Also: I have full confidence in the admin that the event preceding this will be awesome.
Comments
Unfortunately, it can lead to one side completely not understanding how the other side's skills work, and then they run crying to the admin/envoys asking for nerfs when it doesn't actually work the way they think it does.
(I've seen those both sides of the conflict lines do this, I'm not pointing fingers at anyone.)
I've said this on Peasantface, but I guess it's semi-relevant to the discussion at hand but kind off-topic to the thread. Regardless, I feel it's a good lesson for everyone to learn:
Firstly, if I had the ability to install an electrical shock to someone's keyboard whenever the typed the words 'overpowered' and 'nerf' around, I'd love to do so immensely. Those words are thrown around like candy and rarely offer anything of substance towards discussions relating to abilities. I try to avoid use them whenever possible when discussing "balance".
Also, and this is the big one: just because an ability or skill is powerful, that doesn't mean it's too powerful. It's more than likely just competitive. If you lose, was it directly JUST because of that one ability? 90% of the time, I can guarantee that it isn't the case. If an ability or skill lacks reasonable and fair counterplay or offers a medium towards pursuing victory that is substantially easier than all other mediums, you can have a case for it being too powerful. However, in the interest of producing something of value towards a "balance discussion", you should offer reasonable solutions. Reasonable does not include: delete the skill outright or provide it with an effect so miniscule that it no longer challenges you in the slightest. Unfortunately, "balance" is subjective and it always will be as everyone has different opinions as to what can make the game better and that's okay. However, I've read a lot of envoy comments that included red herring, straight up deletion requests with nothing of substance to back it up, ad hominum, false equivalency, loaded questions, strawman, and burden of proof fallacies.
I really recommend that, the next time you die or lose to someone, don't immediately point the finger at a skill or ability. Rather, ask yourself if there is anything you personally could've done to prevent it. If you come to the very difficult conclusion that there is nothing you reasonably could've done in terms of counterplay, then start coming up with solutions to fix them. If you'd like a really good video that explains game balance rather well, there's one here:
The one issue I had with the Champion pets is that they are very much a 'win more' mechanic. This already puts the 'top tier' further above others, and makes breaking your way in that much harder.
- Focus novicehood and ranks into collegiums, make them the center of learning that they were suppose to be.
- Keep the classes as is, You'll still be a wet aquamancer or a tree-loving hartstone, even if your Org name is no longer an exact copy.
- If people still insist on a direct link to their class, then just introduce a new Channel (CLASS <msg> ?) where you can speak to others of your class, for whatever reason.
That aside, on to Coalitions.
Frankly a lot of the same crap has been repeatedly said over time, so I wont say it as well, but it seems people are uncomfortable with the idea of being slapped with a new system and told to "get used to it". If people want more flexibility, then how about suggesting the idea of the players forming the coalitions themselves? Hopefully it wont be too horrible or bland, but eh.
I think this is brilliant. I've been poking around on an alt and I have yet to meet someone in my guild. I was just thinking that the real issue was too many guilds, not so much too many cities or too few players.
Anyway, I don't have anything constructive to add, but as an old player hoping to come back and discouraged by how quiet things seem, I like this.
Oi, where have you been?!?!?
Two guilds would really be good for Glomdoring in my opinion. Other organizations could probably have more than two, but I think healthy populations split between two would be good for some organizations.
A little back ground on why i think this is bad:
This same thing actually happened recently in achaea and imo as well as quite a few others this was one of the worst things to happen. What ended up is a lot of lore and built roleplay just vanished to become no more. In it's place you ended up with 2-3 very generic houses/guilds which offered up the exact same thing for each city/commune with minor factional flavor changes obviously stemming from the factional RP. Each however felt rather soulless and lacked individuality making it all rather bland where as prior each guild/house albeit empty had immense depth with lore built up over years which sometimes was all it took to seal a fate or turn away another. The problem of some being empty and others more robust was present, but it could have been handled better rather than stripping the uniqueness away in a globbed on bandaid fix.
Proposed fix:
The covens idea which seems like it was meant to fix this, but it seems it only binds TWO guilds together which is at a fault if both guilds are near empty. However, why not just modify the coven into this exact thing leaving guilds intact, but change the covens into a sort of coalition that encompasses the idea of 3 generalized types: Religious, Political, Military or what have you.
Conclusion:
This may be less work on the staff to append an existing fix as well as safeguarding the individuality and lore provided by each guild. Then have the player choose which coalition upon completing the tutorial. Much less to change and the same effect is granted of pulling everyone of similar interest together. Adding a coalition channel would also help, i do realize it adds yet another layer, but my interest is really in preserving that which is uniquely Lusternia.
TLDR:
Rather than strip away guilds and erase all of that history and lore, ammend Covens to encompass the three generalized areas, add a channel for it and let the player choose after the tutorial.
Thank you to those who have been polite and brought me into the fold to see it's not going to be like that here. It's what really drew me in initially and lead to me coming back again and eventually going all in to stay. With all of this information, I'm behind the idea of it, knowing we will not just be scrapping everything to start over with no solid rp reason or connections to the history of the guilds. I would be heartbroken if it was just another "Tada! Now you all are one!" kind of deal.