Lusternia Activity Levels

Estarra

I don't think it's any secret that Lusternia's activity level has dropped rather abruptly in the last 30 days or so and I'm trying to understand why. I've popped into Discord a few times and have some ideas, but I'd really like to reach out to you for your thoughts. We really do care about Lusternia and hope you do as well, so if there's something that needs doing, please don't be afraid to share!

Shaddus

Where do I begin.

Because you as a administrator seem to have little or no understanding of the economy or items of your own game. That you built. You horrendously overvalue or undervalue things, sometimes to your detriment, and get pissed off when players catch it, take advantage of it, or complain about it. The recent issue with the website selling "leprechaun pots"? Come on, Estarra. Meanwhile, I'm still paying 109$ for an imaginary spatula that gives me extra food when I cook. 

Because of the waning admin involvement in Lusternia over the past decade. Aside from recent events and hamster hunts by Darvellan, there's nothing interesting going on. We don't have great hunts as often as any of the other games. We rarely see things like MOMSROCK/DADSROCK, ironbeard, gnomes, lotteries (haven't had one in six years) or other holiday goings-on. And the events we do see are either super predictable (Atropos always losing her shears, anyone?) Or make no sense until it concludes at the end of the year (the current event).

Because your intro, for lack of a better phrase, sucks ass. Period . I rolled a newbie alt a few weeks ago and was horrified by the intro. It came across as a sale pitch, and was horribly ooc, not to mention condescending. I'd like to urge you to go to the other ire games, start a newbie, and try out their intros. Then, come back and write a new one.

Because of your stubborn refusal to add anything to the game unless it puts money in your pocket. See: the constant flood of wonderitems we've been inundated with since their addition to the game, many of which are meta-breaking for combat. Meanwhile, when was the last time we had a new basic design added? Fascinators, years ago? You complain about server bloat and replicas, and not wanting to add a lot of new things, but you're all about the new gewgaw people want to pay money for. We can harness great nodes of power and use them for magnificent feats, but can't keep an apiary? Can't seem to harvest chocolate? 

Because your admin....man. You have one of the highest turnover rates of admin in IRE, and one of the lowest ephemeral success rates from what I hear. These guys work their asses off making things, designing, fixing code and what have you, and that's cool. But we don't see them. Gods show up/show back up, start or revive an order, and just disappear. 

Which segues into my next point: there's nothing to do. I have two characters I play on a regular basis. One wakes up, does their org's power quest,  stands around hoping people talk to them or rps with them, and then finally logs off. The other logs in, rubs all their genie bottles, complains about the aether goop cap and lack of coins/presents, stands around hoping to prod his god or dead guild into some rp or even a chat, and then just logs off. Lusternia doesn't engage me anymore. 

Because I have a reputation in the Havens, mostly due to the responses I give like this. And because of that, I know that my opinion doesn't really matter, because I'm not telling you the things you want to hear as opposed to the things you need to hear. And because of all that, I know any actual complaints I make are generally met with an eye roll and a dismissal. And i know there are a lot of other players who feel like specific admin dismiss their complaints or advice, often because it isn't what the admin is looking to hear. 

These are just some of the complaints I have.

Tenaka

I don't think there is anything that can be said in this thread that hasn't been said in 10 other threads over the last 2 years. The only difference is for 2 years it was dismissed as "some players will never be happy, so we will just ignore them" and now the writing is on the wall and it's a frantic scramble to figure out what went wrong.

Short list:
Half the admin do nothing, from a player perspective. Why do you have them? I mean someone is going to come in and say "That's not fair we don't see what they do behind the scenes!!!" and that's correct we don't. What we do see is the fact that nothing comes out of that behind the scenes so a safe assumption is they do nothing behind the scenes.

Wonderitems. You created a money grab that breaks the game on so many levels... at least you made money?

Pay wall. Lusternia has one of the highest pay walls there is. New players are going to find out how much they have to invest and go back to playing WoW where for 20.00 a month they get far more content and balanced game content at that

Projects. You need to stop having 10 things going on at once. Pick something, anything... finish it. Envoys being shut down twice in 2 years to catch up, Server Side Curing, 6th Archetpye, Mage Overhaul, Serverside Defenses, Hallifax Special Reports, overhaul in general (nobody believes overhaul is finished and most believe it caused more harm than good). Just... pick something and finish it.

Envoys. Delete them. Most of them are partisan and the ones that are not are ignored because the partisan ones yell louder.

Look back at the threads of players leaving for the last 2 years and why they are leaving. Your answers to the question you keep asking are all in front of you.

Saran

Seems like...

• People that are into PvP are unhappy about the state of conflict.
• People that are into ic economic stuff are unhappy with the state of the economy.
• People that are into the family system are unhappy with the family system.
• People that logged in to interact aren't finding things to keep them online.
• People that are bash a lot are capping out on demipowers.

Basically, an ever increasing number of reasons to actually play the game are being added to the issues list?

Realistically we can get interaction anywhere, you can get interaction in the IRE set up in three other games with another on it's way.

Players have been posting here for years with ideas for things that would improve the game, they're ignored or better yet told that they're wrong. The reason people aren't raising issues is because these years of experience have demonstrated to the players that this is a pointless pursuit. (Unless you're in the chosen group that are deigned to be listened to, just for fun consider that these voices that are consistently prioritised over other players... they have some responsibility for the current state of the game)

I don't even think it's just the last 2 years, some of these issues have been there for far longer, everything's always "Too hard, btw guys what cool artifact do you want next". 

Vatul

Estarra,

First of all, I just want to thank you for opening this thread and giving people a chance to voice their concerns. There were threads earlier, such as "Player Growth and Retention" that began this dialogue several weeks ago. I had posted my personal thoughts to Divine Interaction, and many had discourse there. Now that you have opened this up, it is a good opportunity for honest and open discussion directly with you as a producer.

I want to iterate as a player that I am speaking for many people with my post, which is going to be an unpleasant read. I am writing this as representative of many who love this game, and perhaps the many who have departed. I do not speak for everyone I know, nor other players - they have their own opinions, which undoubtedly may contradict this content here. And that's okay.

I not only speak for myself, but for those who are perhaps unsure if their posts would be removed or otherwise ignored. For the many players I know who are tired of speaking, and unfortunately not being heard will not speak up again - So I am writing for them. Some of them have departed, some of them no longer play, so, again, I'm writing for them too.

I realise that this may feel like a tired diatribe, there will always be critics. But please realise that this comes out of a love for this game, which we realise is at its death knell. We are your customers, but also your friends in some pseudo sort of way - So this comes with a delicate balance of trying to be nice, and being honest with our critiques, feedback, and general woes. 

I hope though, that it shows that we care about this game, and realise the dire straights that we are in as a community, that has dwindled.

Some also realise that you are desperately aware of the difficulties that will come when Starmourn opens.  Unfortunately, which some predict, will end Lusternia and remove the rest of the players who are merely lying in wait for their open. That is the ugly truth.

For as long as I have been playing, many people have left. More, that I thought would because there is so much rich lore and many cool things about Lusternia. There was a lot that was critiqued upon their time of leaving, many of which might have come with some acidity. That can be polarising, but many believe that it comes from a good place.

These people actively wanted to stay, and tried, but couldn't justify spending their money or time.

I think the biggest problems with Lusternia lies in that admin and producers have bitten off more than they can chew. There is a lot to do, promises are made to keep people happy - then things aren't completed. There are problems with staying in touch what players say, desire, and need to remain customers who want to stay. 

Here's a metaphor, for what I think the situation feels like:

A caretaker has promised a child a puppy for their 10th birthday and then never gave them the puppy. There aren't people around to take care of the child, even though the child wants to be loved - because who doesn't crave that? The child wanders around and ends up getting found again, but only because of another shiny new promise.

They're promised another brand new hybrid puppy that never comes, the cycle repeats. But the child will always thinking of the many promises with the first puppy, and the brand new bike, that their caretaker didn't make happen.

The child is handed or promised new after new thing, and they're expected to be happy. But they just get sad or upset. They stop believing things will ever happen.

The caretaker is still trying to make them happy, but cannot handle the amount of previous promises made - They try to get help, but in the end the caretaker's caretaker gets burnt out trying to do the necessaries. They don't understand why the child leaves when they grow up or stop trusting their promises.

This needs to change. You're going to ask for a solution. There are a ton to choose from, I think.

I know that you have, Estarra, asked for a lot of feedback over the years I have played. While asking for feedback on one thing is a good thing to do, and wonderful - years of problems remain without fixes.  A lot of feedback has been given.

Some are not criticising the work that has been done to eradicate some of these issues, but there are so MANY ISSUES to begin with. As an aside, thank you to those admin who stepped up and gave hours of their time to try to fix all of those issues.

Many of players have presented solutions for some of our hugest problems. There are obviously more. But here is some of the one's I was suggested by some of the players. There are many threads on "Why I Quit" as well that could be useful in terms of feedback to find common themes:

https://forums.lusternia.com/discussion/3349/leaving-lusternia/p1

https://forums.lusternia.com/discussion/comment/187661#Comment_187661

https://forums.lusternia.com/discussion/3355/problem-the-economy

https://forums.lusternia.com/discussion/3353/family-system#latest

https://forums.lusternia.com/discussion/3457/player-retention-and-growth#latest

There is lots of feedback to be found in the public forums you did last year as well. But I've also been speaking to many players for months who have been dissatisfied about a variety of things including those above listed in links, but not limited to:

*People have talked about advertising. Kick it up a notch.

*Hire. More. Admin. Spend a dollar to get thousands of dollars. Hire players to do coding. Hire players to inhabit npcs.  Hire admin that don't have all the powers of divine, create new mechanics so WE CAN HELP YOU. Yes, we can help, by doing more than just give feedback or blowing hot air if you let us. Please.

*Admin taking critiques as attacks. Though this is speculative because some may be acidic in their approach because that is possibly the only way some are paid attention to. Please listen. We may be passionate, but please. We are begging you to listen more, be in touch, more. I am not advocating for being mean to you either. Please see my post in Player Retention and Growth.

*Bias in game balancing mechanics. This is an opinion that is shared. But not one I don't have, but it is one I have heard.

*Huge RP loss, as per lack of admin, and proper staffing to address said problems above. Many of our current admin are great. Not attacking them. There could be more done. RP mechanics, RP encouraging systems. RP. RP. RP.

*Lack of appeal. Lack of things to do. We don't want new things to buy, we want things to be fixed and promises to be fulfilled - not the "soon (tm)" that people fondly or bitterly remark on.

More quests, more something. (Shout out to Darvellan who has done some things recently) Less money spending until we have things that are whole, fixed, and not everything mostly broken. Ianir tried. But now that he's moved on, we need more than just him and Kalikai (who is also amazing) to hold this down. Hire more people. Ask for help from Matt Mihaly.

*Paywall. We spend too much if we want to have a lot of fun in this game. For PVP it's huge. If we are going to be spending that much, then it should be balanced fairly. Partisan is a word for it. If PVP players are the bread and butter of your income, which the game is now geared to be - Then please fix this.

Thank you.

Shaddus

Saran said:

everything's always "Too hard, btw guys what cool artifact do you want next". 

This. So much this.

Shango

Combat mechanics not really being balanced or properly implemented, nigh inactive people being consulted on matters related, the Wonder Item deluge...half expect one that grants everyone the ability to afflict with Aeon one of these days ( do NOT do that )...

The point about activity goes both ways, granted. People complain about no RP but show zero motivation to just start their own, so that hardly helps. However, you then have half done events that just stretch on forever like the plague rats in Magnagora, apparent love for nasty plague mechanics for events, etc...which leaves people the feeling that even from above the RP isn't all that important to them. I am sure (hoping fervently) that this is just perception, and we all know that is hardly a basis of what is the truth, but that impacts a lot of things. When both the combat side AND the RP side get the feeling of neglect, people lose interest real fast. There is SO much potential in Lusternia, even now, that just gets pushed to the wayside.

There's a lot. The inability to at least tri-trans off of leveling credits from 1-Demi hurts quite a lot, that makes the learning curve so damned steep even the point of making alts to 'try new things' is like a kick in the gut. Be it combat, or just in general....basic survival takes up most of those lessons, but then you have things like aethercraft, influencing, trades, arts etc etc...gets to be a bit much. A new player comes in, looks at all that, tallies the cost...nopes right on out. And cannot fault them. I haven't tried the newbie intro yet, only a handful of alts so not my thing, but people have complained a lot about it even when it was changed to this from complaints about the old. Perhaps a general poll thread for suggestions and ideas on a new theme, winner gets something nice, might help with the redesign. Engage the player base, a lot of problems can go away here.

Though that crit change was just out of the blue and a smack to the face of avid hunters across the board. I imagine it stemmed from the introduction of Gnomeweapons and people laughing about the wall of crits that spawn from its use...but the change was NOT needed. At all. 

Estarra

I value your opinion, Shaddus! At least, I always (usually?) enjoy interacting with you. Some of the things you mention (momsrock/dadsrock/ironbeard) are IRE controlled, but we can try to do more of the other events. Regarding leprechaun pots (though I think it was an honest mistake), I apologize. 

Regarding the intro, we've been working on a new intro for several months now and I hope you’ll at least give the new one a try.

I do resent saying that I refuse to add anything to the game unless it puts money in my pocket (if you only knew!). Actually, that really hurts my feelings. Wonder items and other promotional items are required monthly. I understand you and others feel they result in power creep and it's something we will try to address. 

I really don't believe we have the highest admin turnover rate of all IRE games. There are longterm admin here and they're wonderful people.

But I can be stubborn and I apologize to you or anyone else that may have affected. I do hope you will believe that I care about Lusternia and I care about it a lot. It’s something I’ve devoted my life to, and if there's anything we can reasonably do to address things, we'll do it. We just need to know what it is. And, Shaddus, I welcome your opinion even though it may not be stated in the most diplomatic way but if you think I'm some sort of money grubbing, clueless monster, I'm not sure if there's any way I can repair your assessment of me--but I will nonetheless try!

Shango

You know for the promotionals....not a bad thing, can always do repeats of old ones though. Doesn't HAVE to be new ones each time. Maybe spawning free lessons for set activities as the promo? Not logged in so much time, you get X lessons/credits/whatever..but a specific task or quest that even if you don't finish fully, you get something like decent gold generated to make it worthwhile to casual players that cannot spend a lot of time logged on so many days a month. Hell, no NEW wonderitems, but wondercrystal promos would still be highly appreciated. Even with Elite it takes RL years to make all the Wonder items that now exist...so that will help a lot.

Less the sticky aethergoop too, no one likes that, and makes it harder for those of us that enjoy buying novices nice things to help encourage them to stick around, to actually do so.

Saran

A mag player asked me to post this for them

It's obvious the admin are too busy or don't care about the org I'm in even when its one of the most populous. On the RP side we have gone our halfway and just never been met. We have corpses and items laying around the city left over from guild overhaul, important issues undealt with. Look at the unending plague we have that we worked tirelessly on... until it was evident it was just gonna go until admin looked at it anyway. We have not had a single patron request dealt with in the Infernals since its creation, even simple stuff like room descriptions. Mags culture fosters spite that even if no one cares we do and we'll keep going admin or damned bc we don't want our enemies to win and that's finally wearing out. We loved Dro when she was around. We don't blame her because she communicated how long and why she'd be absent. We blame you for not taking on any more, for taking people who do nothing like Thax. You ran this game into the ground yourself by ignoring the basic rp environment in favour of cute meaningless events and cash grabs.

Xenthos

1) I had an idea to fix the crit rate, Ianir seemed to think it was promising but then it fell off into the "not enough time" bin.  I had it mathed out in an email to him, basically ended up in a place where 50% was about the same as the old rate and then it reduced more as you went above that.

Was something like "go back to the old critical rules, but split it out so you get your level-based roll, and if that fails to crit you get a second roll based on the rest of your crit value".

So if you had a 42% critical rate and 30% "bonus" critical buffs, you'd get a 42% chance of a critical, if it failed you'd get a 30% second-chance.  Then I mathed out adding the critical hit artifact to the "level" roll instead of the "bonus" roll too.  Either way is feasible, just changed numbers a bit.  But the critical hit nerf was a huge overcorrection.  I agree that there was a problem, but the solution just hit people who like hunting hard and devalued all the critical stuff we had collected / worked on tremendously (but they all still have the same prices).

2) Pricing of things.  I'm not sure if any thought has been put into this, but the real-world game economy has moved on from "$300 purchase" to more micropurchasing (being able to spend $1-$10 here or there for neat little things).  You simply can't do that here.  You either pay big or you don't buy.  A restructuring of the game to draw more people in to feel that they can invest and achieve something, vs. "I can't afford it so I might as well go" could also be really nice...

The closest you can get is a $25-per-month Elite, which is too pricey for a lot of people (most subscriptions are $10-$15).

3) The events-never-ending thing is a huge issue for Magnagora.  This thing really, really needs to end.

3a. Ditto with the cold weather (but this is happening now, so that's good!  It just needed to stop a lot sooner than it did imo).

4) Yeah, there are a lot of projects being worked on.  Getting some of them done would probably help, but things have just kind of felt like they slowed down to a crawl and more things keep coming up, so the backlog grows.   People have more difficulty feeling optimistic about the direction of things when there is no notable direction.

RL is definitely a huge concern there; the question is, is it possible to get in additional help of some kind to help distribute the load?  Whether it be more mortal coders or some other thing along that line, dropping everything on the shoulders of just a couple of people is a huge burden.

Portius

Right, let's talk about the library. It was the main mechanical thing that I cared about, and I am annoyed with it to the point that I just can't do anything with it anymore. That took out my main reason to do anything in Lusternia, and with friends going inactive I also lost the main social reason.

I'm sure that there are a lot of other mechanical systems that need a pass, but I'm not qualified to talk about most of them.

Disclaimer: I am assuming that the library system is meant to be competitive. Not everyone uses it that way, and it may not be meant to be extremely competitive.

Disclaimer: Most people do not interact with the library that much. You could fix every problem it has, and it probably won't have a massive impact.

On the other hand, most of the problems with the library are policy-level things. You don't need coder time to fix most of them.

The crux of the problem is that the library currently does not work as a competitive system. I have a few specific problems with it, and how to fix them.

1. Prestige Scoring

You cannot have a competition when people don't know the win conditions. Right now, that's how prestige competitions go. You submit books and hope for the best. If you're really dedicated, you try to identify trends and guess at what the judges want.

If the library is going to be competitive, you need a clear scoring rubric to keep things even-handed. You also need to publish it so that everyone knows what the judges are looking for in a book. There are a few specific questions that really, really need addressing in this rubric. They've all seemed very inconsistent with past judging, and they're fairly important considerations:

-Length. Do long books score better than short ones? There have been periods where that seems to have been the case, but there are other times when length seems irrelevant.

-Accuracy. Are scholarly books judged purely on quality of prose, or do they need to accurately reflect game lore?

I actually have a position on that one. I think that is is probably unwise to require scholarlies to be factual. We have no way of actually doing science in game, and most of the lore we can get from room descriptions or questing is fairly superficial. There just isn't enough there to write anything extensive or detailed without making things up.

Side solution: Consider asking for books on specific themes for contests, to give authors a starting point and encourage variety. Don't make it mandatory, but make it a few extra points.

2. Book Rejections

The guide we have to book approval/rejection standards is in HELP CRITIQUING. You may want to rename that so people can find them more easily. You probably also want to look at some of the contents.

This line shows up at the end: "NOTICE: Any big changes of this system will be posted on Announce, but small ones will just be added
without further notice."

That is a bad policy. Having a book rejected is a big deal, especially for people who put a lot of time into them. We should not have to frequently check the rules to see if they have changed. The solution is to announce absolutely every change to those rules. Nothing is small.

For example, this is one of those rules: "- Lack of evidence for scholarly claims (making up lore without labeling it speculation)"

This is a bad rule for the reasons I mentioned in the judging section. Halli had a book run afoul of it a while ago, and I never would have thought it would get rejected for not clearly labeling things as speculation, even if I knew that rule existed. It's too vague. As far as I can tell, this one also came in by stealth. I am open to the possibility that I am senile, but I think this is one of the ones that was declared small and put in without alerting people. But it's huge! Many books that have won prestige and even gotten RP-level approval from admin break it. So I think you need to get rid of it, but even if you don't, you absolutely have to announce things like that.

------------

Ok. Done with policy. Let's look at some other problems that we can probably only fix with coding.

3. Categories

Right now, a library needs to get two books each prestige cycle. One is literary, and one is scholarly. These are not equal in popularity. Most people vastly prefer to write one over the other. That leads to situations where people are writing books that don't interest them just so they can have submissions.

Secondary problem, most libraries struggle to publish two books each year. That often leads to filler books, just so you can have submissions. I don't think anyone likes those. They are't much fun to write, and obvious filler is probably not much fun to approve or judge. But the mechanics encourage it very heavily if you're going heavily into the library.

Solution: Change library prestige so that each library submits only one book, from either category. I would personally nuke the scholarly-literary labels just to avoid people wondering how they should class ambiguous books, but you could leave it in to make them easier to sort. Not a big deal, as long as they stop mattering for prestige.

4. Prestige Contests

Writing a book or recording a play is a lot of effort. There should be a gateway into culture. I suggest designs.

Revamp the prestige contests into a three year cycle. Designs, then books, then plays, one each year. For the design contest, you may want to consider  restricting submissions to org cartels to make them matter a little more and encourage their use. You could also cycle between trades for it. Forging one year, tattoos the next, and so on. Encourages people to delve into trades that might have too few designs, or that they haven't poked at before.

This has a side benefit: If you make it so the bonus from winning prestige only lasts until the next contest gets judged instead of through the whole cycle, you'll make culture scores change more often. That might help to stop single orgs for hogging it for months at a time.

Xenthos

Shango said:

You know for the promotionals....not a bad thing, can always do repeats of old ones though. Doesn't HAVE to be new ones each time. Maybe spawning free lessons for set activities as the promo? Not logged in so much time, you get X lessons/credits/whatever..but a specific task or quest that even if you don't finish fully, you get something like decent gold generated to make it worthwhile to casual players that cannot spend a lot of time logged on so many days a month. Hell, no NEW wonderitems, but wondercrystal promos would still be highly appreciated. Even with Elite it takes RL years to make all the Wonder items that now exist...so that will help a lot.

Less the sticky aethergoop too, no one likes that, and makes it harder for those of us that enjoy buying novices nice things to help encourage them to stick around, to actually do so.

IRE dictates the promotionals: "This month we're doing this general thing, make it fit into your game," is my understanding.  So they don't have as much control over it as you would think.  That certainly doesn't help either, games could use a bit more flexibility to work around their playerbase's needs.

Saran

Shango said:

nigh inactive people being consulted on matters related

Just for a contrast, active peoples opinions seemingly having more weight for why people aren't playing the game over, you know, people who aren't playing the game.

Ayisdra

Starting with recent things.

This event with the invading things - I just don't care about it anymore. It has been going on since July and four months later and we still know next to nothing. Now, this is probably because you have tied the event into the monthly.  The first suggestion would never tie plot stuff into login things. If you want do logins, make it some sort of side quest - maybe something that increases culture or power generation. Second would be shorter turn around times for actual event progress (and not 'oh, these things have changed. Kill them for a month and Let's see what happens.' 'Oh. we are getting closer to finding things. Kill more things for a month') . Personally, I see a month at most for pushing the event forward.


Other things that have already been send:

I understand you have to do wondercrystal promos when IRE tells you do, but you don't have to make some 20crystal item that is so powerpacked that it basically becomes a required item. You can do a 10 crystal item or find some new use for crystals that people would use them on.

Some people play because of the divine interactions. We don't see all that is going on in the background. As such, we tend to believe that very little is actually happening. Admin who have decided to be more behind the scenes and work on fixing/code - I don't understand why you don't have a special group of god (like the anomaly) for these people. Having an admin take a god-role and do nothing with the order (or even delete the order altogether) doesn't send good signs to people. This gets worst when it is an important god to the org.

Other things:

This game is really costly. You may not think it is when you are looking at the prices in credits, but once you look at it using RL money, it is crazy. - That 300cr buff rune that makes you 15% better? 105USD. That 15%? Only a few hundred more damage at best. And that is one of the least offensive prices. Ones that are 1-2K credits are just insane for what they give. I know auctions inflate prices a lot but the Rune of the Magi - currently bid is 4053cr. This is 1120USD to be 20% better. You probably could cut all artifacts in half and they would be much better.

Echoing the tritrans from leveling credits - I think in general that either there should be more lessons given or the lessons required to trans reduced. It is 285cr to trans a skill, adding another cost to the list.

Estarra

Oi! Was answering Shaddus and didn't see all the other responses!

We can't hire more people unfortunately. That just isn't an option. Projects take time to do, and while I would love to address everything at once, we have to tackle things piecemeal. And, Tenaka, I think you are right that we need to focus on one thing at a time.

I will push back on "bias in game mechanics". There really is not any bias. If I had a nickle for every time someone said the admin were biased toward Magnagora or Glomdoring or Gaudiguch or whatever, I'd retire rich.

Look, the buck stops with me and many of the things you guys are bringing up are valid and can be laid at my feet. I'll take the blame. But I hope we can move forward and not just point fingers to the past.

Shaddus

Momsrock/dadsrock may be ire controlled, but you (so far as I know), have to activate them. You don't,  even when other ire games do. You don't host greathunts when most of the other ones do. You just don't seem to go out of your way to do the things that seem to make life interesting for other ire players. 

As for gods, you're right. You do have some really good long term admin up there. To copy and paste a rant I had with someone privately on discord about this very thread:


Dro keeps making excuses as to why she can't be around, but I get it. Crumkane has quit on me -twice-. Valtreth has an event, makes a god realm, throws together some sort of rp with no connection to anything Celestian or eventru/lyrethish, and then flies off into the void with two half formed, never returning. Carakhan stays around just long enough to make her shrines and appoint some people, and then leaves. Whoever took over thax literally showed up for his return event, has a new mob that was around for it, and then just disappears after a day. No message for the person who was literally hired to be his public relations guy, nothing.


 Don't get me wrong. I appreciate the admin. I know they work their asses off.  But we don't see it. We don't see what they're doing because they're not around.  We see our monthly "quest", that's about it. They have lives outside Lusternia, and I don't want them to give those up for a game. But what I do want is to know that there are people running this game, not just a skeleton crew thrown together to keep it going.

Shango

Well just saying argument could be made that a wondercrystal event would equate to the same value as 'new artifact' one, since it ties into the old sets that already exist. And lets more of them come into being as people can MAKE the damned things quicker than Elite 1/month allows for. But I guess it's true that'd be argued between Estarra and IRE corp.

Estarra

Shaddus said:

Saran said:

everything's always "Too hard, btw guys what cool artifact do you want next". 

This. So much this.

Again, EVERY game in IRE is mandated to do monthly promos, so we're all coming up with new artifacts on a regular basis. It's not like there's a choice between rewriting a new skillset and making an artifact. I really don't think it's a fair accusation that we're stopping development just for artifacts; we're doing mandated promotions. However, if some artifacts are OP, that's something we can address.

Portius

I feel like a tentative solution to people not seeing behind the scenes stuff might be dev diaries. I vaguely remember you posting some ages ago? Havens Hangout or something like that? It might help, as long as the things that get mentioned materialize over time.

Vatul

Estarra said:

Oi! Was answering Shaddus and didn't see all the other responses!

We can't hire more people unfortunately. That just isn't an option. Projects take time to do, and while I would love to address everything at once, we have to tackle things piecemeal. And, Tenaka, I think you are right that we need to focus on one thing at a time.

I will push back on "bias in game mechanics". There really is not any bias. If I had a nickle for every time someone said the admin were biased toward Magnagora or Glomdoring or Gaudiguch or whatever, I'd retire rich.

Look, the buck stops with me and many of the things you guys are bringing up are valid and can be laid at my feet. I'll take the blame. But I hope we can move forward and not just point fingers to the past.

My post was not about pointing fingers, but rather stating opinions of those who I have heard who will leave. There is a lot in my post that is not about that.

Unfortunately these beliefs exist, because frankly there's a lot not being fixed to balance what could be perceived of as bias. And I think that's understandable, given how frustrated people can be. Player's perceptions matter, unfortunately, even if it isn't the truth.

As I have addressed in my post in Player Retention most of us aren't taking that line. I'm not.

If you can't hire people, change the mechanics - push for more volunteers on tasks that can as I said. Instead of the limb of the beast of a thousand problems, one at a time.

There's a lot that can be said by making it more attractive to help the game, and change the community's approach as I mentioned in Player Retention.

Again, I know lots of the issues I listed are repeats. But the resources and forum links should get us started on finding more common themes.

Thanks for your time in this thread. We appreciate it.

Saran

Estarra said:

I will push back on "bias in game mechanics". There really is not any bias. If I had a nickle for every time someone said the admin were biased toward Magnagora or Glomdoring or Gaudiguch or whatever, I'd retire rich.

Look, the buck stops with me and many of the things you guys are bringing up are valid and can be laid at my feet. I'll take the blame. But I hope we can move forward and not just point fingers to the past.

Whether or not there is bias is utterly irrelevant, there is something creating that view and rather than addressing the source of that players get insistence that it's not an issue.

Past experience also informs human expectations, players will hold the same expectations of the admin until they are consistently shown those expectations are wrong.


Re: The issues with Gods. My suggestion for separation between order and non-order divine was because of the frustration of Hoaracle's return. It was so separate from old Hoaracle that you could have just slapped a different name on him and not upset the people that were in the old order.

Shaddus

Estarra said:

Shaddus said:

Saran said:

everything's always "Too hard, btw guys what cool artifact do you want next". 

This. So much this.

Again, EVERY game in IRE is mandated to do monthly promos, so we're all coming up with new artifacts on a regular basis. It's not like there's a choice between rewriting a new skillset and making an artifact. I really don't think it's a fair accusation that we're stopping development just for artifacts; we're doing mandated promotions. However, if some artifacts are OP, that's something we can address.

Let me see if I can sum up or tl;dr my problems with Lusternia and your post with a metaphor.


You've bought a car, and it's a nice car with all the bells and whistles. But after a while, it starts to get worn. Maybe a side panel gets rusty, the ac goes out, someone snaps the Mustang off your hood. Instead of fixing these things, you're slapping a shiny coat of paint on it and going about your business, wondering why your blue book value has went down. This whole time, your buddies keep urging you to invest in fixing things. "Nah." You reply, sticking a pair of fuzzy dice under the rear view. "It's just as good as it was when I first bought it!"

Then one day, you aren't the cool car in town anymore. People snicker when you drive past. Little kids point and laugh. But at least you have that fresh coat of paint and running lights, right? But there's a new kid coming to town, and he's driving a space ship-looking car, and people don't want to ride in your jalopy because you haven't taken care of it. So you ask your pals again, and they just shrug because they have been telling you what's wrong the whole time.


And you didn't listen. And they have no reason to believe you're going to listen this time either.

Maligorn

I did say I didn't want to hash over it in another thread, but you're giving me another opportunity to speak my mind.

Hallifax has been in limbo, PvPwise, for a year or more now. It feels like nobody has been tackling the Harmonics/Aeonics special report, which also includes a reworking of the entire city's group synergy.* Without that rework, Hallifax's skills do not work. We lost PvPers. We will continue to lose PvP-minded individuals that start in Hallifax, quickly realize that there are better skillsets out there, and leave for greener pastures. A few of Hallifax's key players resigned after Deichtine's Ascension, citing that there would be no appreciable changes to our mechanics in a timely manner. Unfortunately, they're still right. Every day they're being proven more and more right. It feels like no one wants to step up and fix the glaring problems in Hallifax; we've been shoved to the side by Yet Another Warrior Overhaul and then the Nihilist soft rework, and of course I'm sure we've been sidetracked by monthly promos and the new intro - and maybe even the mage overhaul. Yes, these things benefit the game as a whole. But also, you have alienated a once-devoted portion of your playerbase. Some of them aren't going to come back. That's depressing for me, too (remember, vicious cycle) to the point I don't want to play anymore either. I haven't cut the cord with retirement because it's too permanent, but I have more or less stopped playing.

Conversely, the opposite is true regarding activity, if something comes along and revitalizes the org, people will notice and cluster back on. More players begets more players. But frankly, from my PoV (and many other's) that seems unrealistic. The more you shove Hallifax to the side, the more you can count on a ghost town of an org.

And don't think I'm just catering to PvPers either. Combatants are the lifeblood of any org. Without people willing to do conquest events, your org won't show up on POLITICS or POLITICS ASPACE. People who strictly roleplay (or stick to influencing/writing plays and books) lose that incentive to log in, because not only are you missing a great portion of your org, you also are fairly irrelevant in the game until you start making real claims for yourself. Because it's a MUD and not a MUSH, you Actually Have To Do Things to earn respect. You can't rely on just lore and RP fluff to know Collectivism is a valid way of life. You have to demonstrate it. And, quite literally, we are unable to do that, because our skills are awful and unfinished.

The release of Tessenchi was supposed to be a gratifying moment in the lives of Hallifaxians. Wow! We finally get access to a very strong class! But after the hype wore off, it was quickly apparent that Tessenchi were not up to monk standard - for some reason, they were actually much worse at release (not as bad as Nunchaku though, my heart goes out to them), with some strange design choices (mainly, the not-Instakill). Frankly, it felt like they (both Tessenchi and Nunchaku) were deliberately released underpowered as some kind of test to see if watered-down monks could be applied to the other 4. Well, we made our changes via the envoy system and it's probably better now ----- notice I said probably, because the people that WOULD'VE been around to test the new and improved Tessenchi had already left by the time it was brought up to par.

I think I can safely say for all of us that the admin of Hallifax (Isune and Czixi at the time) were the only saving grace Hallifax had. If there were any reason to try and make our skills work and brute force our way into relevance, it was because they really brought legitimacy and purpose to our work.

I also really don't like how guilds were forced to pay for upgrades/paths/expansions. It's the admin's job to give us legitimacy in the game proper - these things should be free. We can come up with the lore, the scrolls and the descriptions, sure, but these things shouldn't cost money or resources. That's ridiculous. As a whole, the new guilds still feel tacked on, like an afterthought. I'd love to see them given more relevance - I think a great place to start would be for admin to brainstorm with leadership (if they can't because the guild is inactive, then with each other) on how to include more New Guild stuff in the city proper. Like, for example, putting some burgundy-and-silver pennants or banners in room descriptions in the city, to celebrate the Consortium. Something like that. Ambients with unnamed but clearly guild-affiliated individuals.

The horribleness of the intro has already been covered, that's fine.

I just can't bring myself to talk about powercreep. You all know how I feel about wonder items and other things like that.

*Yes, I've been told that the Harmonics/Aeonics report is still on the table. I know it's still happening. I hadn't been updated on its progress for several months until maybe 2 days ago, and it was still a very vague "we're working on it". No, I don't mean to insult the people that may have put real time into it. But to say the clock's ticking is an understatement. Everyone's already gone. (That's not an excuse to keep putting it off, by the way).

Shaddus

If you want proof that nobody seems to want to fix broken things or fix major typos, think about when dingbats retired.  Then, go read HELP URTRAPS and wonder why it still gives prices in dingbats.

"But Shaddus, that's not really that big of a deal."


No, it's not. But it does feed into what we're saying, that the admin are too busy doing "Ire mandated promos" and not fixing what's already there, or finishing projects. 


Edit: This has apparently been fixed since last time I looked. Mea culpa.

Karlach

Ok so I haven't played for several months now, and even before then my playtime was sporadic at best since coming back a couple of years ago.

There are several reasons I choose to no longer play, one that is personal and not useful for retaining any other players, but otherwise:

A: Content, truthfully I feel like I've done it all, and there's not enough fresh content to continue playing regularly, revolts flares domoths and wildnodes are just the same thing over and over again. Their lustre has long faded and they're merely repetitive RNG time activated events. The drive to build something up died in 2014 due to player drama, and there's no desire to put the level of effort in to create something like that again anymore.

B: Wonder items. They've already been mentioned here to death already but here's my +1, combat has become vastly imbalanced with their existence, and the game becomes more and more gated to new players with the ever increasing (and sure as hell expensive) must haves to get into combat.

C: Speaking of combat, skills remain broken for months, sometimes a year or more. Both in the over and underpowered means, nobody wants to use the latter, or waste time opposing the former. These things need to be identified, solutions created and implimented swifter, the envoy system is flawed as all heck with partisan arguments and people using their input to metagame combat by influencing the abilities they use vs the abilities they face, beyond that, skills that need to be changed quickly share their development time with non important tweaks, QoL changes and flavour skills getting adjustments.

There needs to be a system seperate from the envoys, where certain things are fixed swiftly to keep game balance constant, rather than wait months for change to come.

Edit: Thought I wrote this but I did not, on the flip side, the entire change to the crit system pissed me off greatly, that was an admin decided project, which acted without any player input or feedback, and feedback given post implementation felt ignored as the system remains as is, complete with now ridiculously overpriced artifacts.


There are other smaller reasons, but those are the key three for me. I love the world, the story and I wish there was more admin/player interaction but I get the difficulties of both recruiting admin and admin finding free time to engage, aside from their other work. This doesn't mean I'm okay with things as they are, more that I realise it's harder to fix.

Estarra

In case you didn't see it:

ANNOUNCE NEWS #2859
Date: 10/17/2018 at 3:43
From: Estarra the Eternal
To  : Everyone
Subj: Introducing Orael the Anomaly!

I'd like to introduce Lusternia's new coder: Orael the Anomaly. He understands
combat and is familiar with balance and, more importantly, knows Lusternia
combat like very few others. His first mandate is to balance the combat,
including artifacts (including promotional artifacts like wonderitems). He will
be given veto power (even over me!) to take whatever actions he deems necessary
to bring balance to the game, including reviewing any new potential artifacts or
powers.

Further, we will be discarding the envoy system (don't cry!). Rather, we will
allow anyone to write reports, and allow players to vote on reports, and those
reports that rise to the top will be addressed. (This is a simplistic overview
but details will be explained further later.) For the time being, we will keep
the envoys themselves as a group for feedback.

After the Anniversary Battlechess Tournament this Sunday (2:00 p.m. PST), Orael
and I will meet with whoever wishes to meet with us to discuss any topic of your
choosing.

Hope to see you then!

Portius

Re: Events

Maybe do shorter events more often instead of having ones that last months at a time? At a personal level I'd also prefer lower scale things. Less basin-shaking threats, more crimes, NPCs having feuds and such. I dunno if that one is a popular opinion or not, but I find those easier to relate to and be interested in.

Saran

Just with all the mentions of combat, probably also worth noting that it's feeling like it's been prioritised for years now.

Something like a proper economy rework could be more far reaching than combat, but done well it could tie into systems across the game offering incentives to traders, bashers, and combatants.

Shaddus

I'm hoping that the admin that read this, and not just Estarra, understand that we want Lusternia to keep going. We aren't saying these things to hurt Lusternia, or the people behind the scenes. As novices are Lusternia's lifesblood, the administration is its heart, and we need one as much as we need the other. But Lusternia has major problems, and if you're actually reading these posts without dismissing them offhand, you'll realise that many of them have common threads, common problems. We have to work on these things together.


This has been my second home for probably fifteen or so years. It's seen me through depression and bouts of suicidal thoughts, and periods of joy and sunshine. It's been there when I need a creative outlet or just a place to be someone other than an overweight, overworked 38 year old. I want Lusternia to be the sort of place my kids would be interested in playing in, and telling their friends about. But right now, it's dying. I just hope this new helper can work to bring Lusternia up to snuff.  

Estarra

Portius said:

Re: Events

Maybe do shorter events more often instead of having ones that last months at a time? At a personal level I'd also prefer lower scale things. Less basin-shaking threats, more crimes, NPCs having feuds and such. I dunno if that one is a popular opinion or not, but I find those easier to relate to and be interested in.

We'll probably review what happened this year with events. We generally run a year long storyline and some years are more successful than others (Goloths? Dream Gods? Lovers?). Anyway, thanks for the ideas and input!