Lusternia's Direction

Estarra

I occasionally ask this and thought it would be a good time to inaugurate the new forums: What do you think of Lusternia's direction? Are there things you'd like to see that we haven't done? What improvements would you like to see? Or what things do you like that you'd want us to continue to focus on?

Ssaliss

In no particular order:

• Gold sinks. Right now, gold enters the system, but never really leaves it, leading to a rather massive inflation. I made a couple of threads on this topic on the old forums, if you still have access to them.
• Make it easier to get into combat. There was a recent thread about this too on the old forums (although I can't remember the name of it, I think Zvoltz made a few posts in that thread). It feels like much too much is needed skill-wise to get into combat these days, since everything is balanced around trans, and there are quite a few defensive buffs to be gotten (Resilience in particular, since it shrugs venoms, meaning newbies get more afflictions than oldbies). Don't get me wrong, I know a lot of effort has been put into this recently (what with aff-messages and firstaid making system-making much easier), but more can still be done.
  

Xenthos

1) Balance the Magnagoran spike-construct to be in line with the other constructs.
2) Make quest curio pieces easier to attain (they're a complete pita).
3) Nerf lifeleeching mobs across the board, [b]or[/b] make them worth more exp than other mobs of a similar level.
4) Fix warrior weapon rune costs, to bring them in line with other classes.

Is this the kind of thing you're looking for?

Estarra

Feel free to offer suggestions for gold sinks! We're always looking for them!

Xenthos

From the other side:
1) I love the god-RP we've been having recently, both with Shikari and with the NPCs. 
2) I haven't really gotten into the Ikon stuff much yet, but from the bit I've played it's pretty fun.  Putting in neat little games is great.  I'd like to be able to do it in places other than a stage, though.
3) Iooooosaaaaaaaaaaaai.

Ssaliss

Just noticed the old forums still exist, so here are some linked threads:

Gold drains
Steady goldsinks
Gold sinks

Ayisdra

Going off of the gold sinks and the new Ikon stuff - perhaps some packets sold for gold?

I know Shikari and Nocht (I think Nocht has been around anyways) have been around for various things. but I haven't seen Viravain in ages. This could be from just being busy with other things. Or it could be that she no longer has an active player (seeing as the offering logs haven't been reset in a while...). Going off that, I would love to see more god-rp/things.
(Yes I am jealous of other gods' mobs (and their realm quests)).

Drayl

I *still* say having the ability to hire NPC comrades would be nice, even though the Aetherspace NPC comrades idea has been shot down. If you charge by the hour, by the type (fighter(monk/warrior/bard/etc), influencer(bully/sycophant/etc), aetherspacer(turreter/empath/etc)), and by level of ability, that'd be a decent gold sink. I'd spend a good bit of gold to have a few along when hunting in the Undervault, or to explore the Aetherspace.

It'd probably be best if the place they're hired from "shuts down" during flares/revolts, to keep a rich person from having an undue advantage, though.

Just sayin'.

[Edit: This is relevant in it being Lusternia direction /opinion/, as well as a gold sink idea. That is all.]

Ssaliss

Oh, and since they exist, I might as well link the combat topic as well:

Conflict, combat, and all around excitement

Estarra

So what's in those threads, what's your favorite (and doable) gold sink ideas?

Kiradawea

The ability for players to join in on shaping the scene of the basin. To me, it feels like there haven't been meaningful player input in the political scene of the basin since Hai'Gloh. I don't know, perhaps I've missed instances, but that was the last event I recall that showed itself to be player initiated. I want that to still be possible. I want to be able to turn the Ebonglom Wyrdling back into Deb, or remove the Amaranth branding on Maeve, or build a sonic echolocator to help create travelling paths to the astrology planets. But these things seem impossible to get done unless you become an admin yourself, something I've almost given up at this point. I understand that a lot of work would go into creating these events, and accompanying areas even, but I do wish for it to be possible for a player to act and force an event, rather than just react to the events as they're presented.

Xenthos

I think Deb is a milkmaid or something.

You mean Gib.

You also can't do that since he's a guildhall.

Xenthos

Also, if I get to 1500 critters into this thing and there is still no change I am going to explode.

Boom.

Kiradawea

Sure I could. The Celestines got their guildhall destroyed, and got an even better, totally awesome one in return. Being an essence-converter might be more of an issue, but I seem to recall complaints a while back about having a killable essence-converter. Could solve two problems in one fell, or maybe even not-so-fell, swoop.

Bryna

More lotteries

More divine interaction. I'm not saying the administration needs to make an event every single week, but a lot of us play primarily to interact with others and the divine especially. If there's not an event, too many people just sit around doing nothing except grinding or raiding.

More demi powers

I'd personally love a scroll for guildleaders and such to peruse in order to get a general idea on the costs for upgrades to guildhalls/emotes/demipowers and the like. 

Lothringen

(Potentially) Unpopular opinion, read at own risk:

I think we need to move away from things like ikons, curios, and vengeance. This isn't meant to be a negative comment about these things themselves, or the people who worked hard to create them, but I feel that Lusternia's conflict mechanics have been neglected for so long in favour of "games within a game" that, really, have no effect or significance on the world outside of being fads and distractions.

I think the focus needs to be the game of Lusternia itself, not Lusternia's versions of Magic, Beanie Babies, and Mafia.

Rivius

Well, I think the only real suggestion (direction-wise) I can give now is to sort of hold back on releasing new orgs/skillsets/ guilds/making lusternia more complicated for a while. It's honestly a wonderful game with an amazing amount of variety to it, but it also has a steep learning curve and a lot for people to keep up with. I'm not saying 'never release anything new' - and from your last ustream we know new stuff is coming - but I just want it to slow down a little bit. I don't think we're ready for a lot of new stuff yet. I think we have a lot of content, and while it's all quite great, it needs some polishing up. I guess to sum up, I want to focus on sprucing up all we have now instead of introducing too many new things.

Also, Xenthos' stuff on warrior runes. -duck-

One thing I thought up, that might be outside of what you're looking for, is addition of more specific symptom lines here and there for certain things. Like for example, the different impales share a number of  the same symptom lines. I can probably find other examples of things that I think should just be change or go because they make things more complicated than they need to be.

Svorai

I think Lusternia has made leaps and bounds in the right direction the last few years I've played. You have some real quality gods and volunteers who have managed so many quests, implemented so many new skills, games, features, squished bugs to irrelevance and all 'round made the game a lot more fun than when I first started playing.

The communication from Admin in recent months on the forums and Facebook has been awesome. I think this is the most important thing that needs to continue -- because your passion is our passion, and it's great to be able to meet in the middle.

My biggest gripe with Lusternia is that it is so enormous and intricate that it really is hard for new people to get into the game. By new, I don't mean IRE imports -- because at least they get basic concepts -- but never-played-MUD-before-what-is-this type people.

I would love to see an overhaul of the newbie induction system. Some people really need to be spoonfed, and I don't think that the few 'HINTS' in red text cut it. The Newtons Caverns quests are hard, and you're kicked out of the area too soon (in some cases) to finish them. I, at least, felt tense when I was in Lollyprin, hoping that I wouldn't gain too much xp so I could explore the area more.

There is so much potential for newbies to learn about races, other organisations, gods and history in this introductory area. Not a lot of people take the time to read the histories on the website -- and why should they? Shouldn't they be able to get this information readily in the game? There are help texts, sure, but it would be so much more fun and engaging if they could do mini-quests to learn different things that every person in Lusternia should know. 

I'd love to see Collegiums reviewed, and become more of a community within a community instead of an aether and something you have to graduate quickly so you can start being relevant. Why should this process be rushed or end as soon as you complete six (fairly simple) quests? I wouldn't want the Collegium to be become a tedious affair that more capable people could just skip (as they do now, by completing the six quests), but allow real newbies the chance to stay there if they need the support. If you're ready, do what you need to and graduate -- without honours. Those who stay and really immerse themselves in the Collegium and complete all they are required to (not just six quests) would get honours. So it means something. 

Anyway, I'll stop here. But yes. I'm of the mind that a focus on new players is more important than a focus on keeping existing players happy.

Zvoltz

While my intent isn't to argue or disagree with you in any way, I do want to clear up something that I think is a misconception:

Lothringen said:

(Potentially) Unpopular opinion, read at own risk:

I think we need to move away from things like ikons, curios, and vengeance. This isn't meant to be a negative comment about these things themselves, or the people who worked hard to create them, but I feel that Lusternia's conflict mechanics have been neglected for so long in favour of "games within a game" that, really, have no effect or significance on the world outside of being fads and distractions.

I think the focus needs to be the game of Lusternia itself, not Lusternia's versions of Magic, Beanie Babies, and Mafia.

There are a lot of different admin up here with differing skill sets and abilities. For instance, if I recall correctly, Vengeance was done as a project from an ephemeral type-person before they became a "real" god. Also, with ikons we did utilise Iosai for some coding (which she did amazingly and I am very grateful for her work). However, almost all of the ikon content was done by people like me who are not coders and could not really work on things like combat and conflict mechanics.

I won't disagree or agree about other mechanics needing to be looked at, but I do want to point out that when we release things like mini-games, that doesn't mean other things have been ignored or put on hold. Even if we hadn't done ikons, my time as a volunteer would not have been used toward coding a new domoth system/aetherflares/revolts or anything like that. In fact, if Estarra had turned down my proposal to do ikons, I probably would have spent all the time I did working on them on playing Mists of Pandaria instead.

It isn't really an EITHER we work on conflict mechanics OR we just make mini-games. Doing one in no way precludes the other.

Lothringen

From where I stand, as a player, one of these things is being done, and one of them is not. It's a simple as that, really. What Svorai alluded to (though in a different context) was that the game was already extremely large, and complicated, and adding more elements on top of that when certain other elements are considered dysfunctional is not a favourable direction, in my opinion.

It's not my intention to offend anyone, or minimize their contributions--even if they're great contributions, I'm of the mind that what we have needs to be fixed before new things are added, and that's the direction I'd like to see the game go in.

Soraya

Hi..
Completely new to the game so I can understand if you over look this but I feel like there is too much going on.. I understand it is a big realm (Wow, big as in where is everyone?) but it makes it difficult for kids like me to really get involved when I see we're frequently waiting about for so-and-so to get out from where ever they are, or even know if so-and-so is around and if we're bothering them with our newbishness.

From what I have played so far (Played    : 1 days, 5 hours, and 22 minutes  | This Week : 1 days, 5 hours, and 22 minutes  )

I kind of agree with Lothringen, i feel like there is a lot of 'game within a game' going on. If anything, I hope to see more things that actively matter aside from filling nexus' and more opportunity for the players to immerse in the RP of Lusternia (Which has been difficult to find..) Anyways, just my likely meaningless or off subject opinion from a new players P.O.V.

Svorai

It's totally on topic, Soraya. The impressions of new players is probably more telling than that of older players who have already decided their niche in the game. So yay.

Jhyii

Okay a direction I'd like to see for Lusternia to head in has more to do with the Player base then the Divine. Lusternia has Libraries and Stages and I think this is amazing and why does no one tell the newbies about these awesome things?

The guilds are wonderfully set up to teach us the basics of how to stand on our own two feet within the game mechanics but I'd like it if we were pushed in the direction of the basics of role playing too. From what I've seen of them? The Library and Stages are a good introduction to that.

Saran

Personally, I want to see some more iterations going on. It's been happening recently with the x month reviews of new skills which is great, but it would be amazing if there was time dedicated to going back over things.

Things like areas could be developed and improved upon over time, now it tends to feel like zones, as an example, tend to be a bit stand-alone and can feel like they exist just to tell the story they were made for. I'd really love to see them being expanded, lifting their scopes from their individual battles to the basin/planes and maybe even crafting factions that are fighting these battles on various fronts. Or on the flip-side, rather than expanding the denizens in an area, expand the area itself, unveil more and greater secrets. 

Here the idea is to craft quests that span the basin(a secret cult that is behind the scenes of various areas, or perhaps a group in one area needs something from another zone to further their goals), that are large because of the complexity required to get the outcome rather than necessarily a large amount of work, knitting the world together and maybe even pushing more towards questing as an alternative to bashing.

Steam running out, but that's just something that could be built up over time. Zone is released just like all zones, then go back and add some global interaction, then some more, then later something else interacts with the zone/denizens, until ultimately you're going through the spirit plane on the orders of Etil'ck to help with something that has been uncovered in Oleanvir.

Draylor

Fix alliances and combat.

Everything else will then fall into place.

Eventru

Draylor said:

Fix alliances and combat.

Everything else will then fall into place.

We don't make, code or produce alliances.

That's aaalll on you guys.

Iasmos

 

Sakr

Question, with many of the guilds being spaced out too thin, can guilds go inactive, placed into stasis, until there is a bigger demand for them (thinking about the bard | monk guilds). With 5 different cities | communes, the player base is being spaced out pretty thin.

Janalon

First of all, I continue to always be impressed with the unfolding story arc of Lusternia. The core admin and all of the additional patrons are top notch. My order experience with Shikari is especially rewarding. I'd love if every org could be completely filled with active eph's, though I know that is a tall order. 

Thrilled to see ChangeLog to give more transparency to small bug updates, the rate at which bugs are addressed, and all of the newly coded content (combat, games, and otherwise). 

Also greatly appreciate Envoys being "normed" by some easy-to-follow guidelines that have all but stomped out previous Envoy-wars. The newly minted pending/draft system allows for better development of reports and encourages more constructive feedback. 

Outside of the envoy system, I know the Admin really listens to the forums for constructive feedback. The special report system was a great example of using the forums as both a focus group and mass sourcing for solutions. 

Although it may seem like a minor detail, I love the direction that monthly promotions have taken over the past year. If you remember not-so-long ago, there were "login" incentives for credit/lessons. Although I'd never turn down the freebie, this approach really broke with RP and felt like a cheap incentive. 

The recent story/quest based incentives are far superior... not to mention reward appropriate behavior (i.e. playing the game rather than gaming the system). Sure, repeating a small quest for 21/30 days can sometimes get a little frustrating, but I've haven't been disappointed by the reward. 

The mini-game and curio-collecting aspects of Lusternia seems much more like some of the modern, kid-friendly MMO's rather than your tradition MUD. As someone who doesn't really participate in confrontation mechanics, I can appreciate there other means to play the game with influence, writing (library & stage), RP, history, mini-games, collecting, quests, etc. 

Though, the number of ways to play Lusternia feels daunting (even to a more seasoned player). I'd love to see achievements catch up, and help incentivize these various aspects. 

I understand how various players may feel that this all takes away form the combat/conflict aspect of Lusternia. There's even more of a learning curve for combat. There's been great development in easing high-end bashing / combat through in-game healing/curing. 

I'd further encourage development. I'd also love to see IRE officially endorse Mudlet to further promote mass sourcing of various player-created modules (i.e. tabbed chat, tabbed maps, affliction tracker) to help players across all platforms. 

Ssaliss

Janalon said:

I'd also love to see IRE officially endorse Mudlet to further promote mass sourcing of various player-created modules (i.e. tabbed chat, tabbed maps, affliction tracker) to help players across all platforms. 

I just want to say no to that. Not because Mudlet is a bad client or anything like that, but because they should maintain their neutrality. Plus, they've spent plenty to develop their own client, so it would kinda be like shooting themselves in the foot.

Draylor

Sakr said:

(Thinking about the bard | monk guilds). 

My bard guild seems to be doing just fine, heh. It's more an org issue rather than a archetype issue.