Best Of

Brawrur said:

We've literally had multiple discussions with Oraeal over the course of like months telling him how bullshit this thing is. 

Well, then this is a huge issue. Why are there these discussions taking place away from most of the player base?

Mboagn said:

Wyrdenwood Creeping had been raised as problematic before. You even have players here who play on the side of Glomdoring who at least acknowledge that something needs to change with how the skill operates. Creeping was not just "suddenly problematic during Ascension"; we saw it coming from a mile away and the powers that be chose not to do anything about it.

No, it has not. You keep saying this and it is still a lie. There has been no report put in for wyrdenwood bombs. You did rant about it on discord, but there is way, way more consistent ranting about monks on discord too. There was huge ranting about Aeonics, at one point. Etc. It is unreasonable to expect IO to change things because a handful of people are ranting about an ability.

Put in a report. If that report is supported by players, and then still rejected by the admins, then you can start saying what you've been saying and it will actually mean something.

IHC had more melders, more people able to just scout and walk around and mark nodes for braziering, more beckoners, more bards, at least two old-school players who came back just for Ascension including one ascendant, and seven different people who could chase down the staff. They control roughly half the domoths, which they could have tuned to a specific person, guild, or org to give that person buffs to help. 

Shadowlight had two people for staff duty. One (me) was specifically told several dozen times that his job wasn't to fight, it was to hold the staff. Ciaran's job was to chase the staff, and bring it to me. Everyone else was a wyrdenwood/chem, we had one melder (Ayisdra), I think two Celestines for beckoning (they didn't do as much as the Nihilists did, #notsalty), and we had some warriors with a few shadowdancers. We specifically set up for damage and fortressing, which is what Ascension is about. It's an endurance trial. The last 15 minutes, I just laid on my INVOKE SERPENT alias and hoped it would go through, yelling over voicechat about needing salting until it happened. 


Having said all that, there was absolutely nothing that kept any of you from being a pyrochem, wildewood, or geochem, link each of your corresponding fellows, and aoe bombing the hell out of us. We were focused about our task, you were not. That doesn't mean you deserved to lose, but we squeaked out a win despite being outmatched. 

Now, I'm not saying all of this to piss you off. I don't know how much prep you personally spent getting ready for this. I went out of my way to try and max my resistances as much as possible, investing in a level 3 health rune as well as three different level 3 resistance runes towards elements I knew I'd be taking damage from.  I changed classes TWICE to get where I needed, first taking up Sentinel (warrior) for tankiness, then afterwards finding out that monk would be marginally tankier. I invested in maxing out my wonderpipe for more elemental protection as well as wonderpiping krokani for some protection as well as reduced blackout, and even secretly reincarnated into a kephera temporarily to take less damage from attacks, with my divine pendant giving me the level 5 kephera perk, sending roughly a third of fire and asphyx (Pyrochem), cutting and blunt (ninjakari, warrior, nihilist torture, some Caco damage) damage to my 13/13 ego instead. I made sure I had aethercandies and full tattoos (22% armour, plus a shield for another 3% as needed). I looked for every perk I could find, even going so far as chatting up a divine and working to impress them to earn a truefavour for increased protection.  I juggled four different karma blessings. I chatted up everyone on my side and asked for tips, help with reflexes, and any way to help my chances.

I jumped through hoops to get where I was, and I still had people carrying me, because it's a team effort. That's how it works.

Terentia said:

Outside @Lantra's great question about hearing what players like about game lore for building purposes, I am wondering, in order to think about org roleplay: What is one thing that irks you about your org's lore? What is one thing that you love about it? This isn't a question about what you would change, by the way. Simply, I want to know what are the pressure points. 

With Gaudiguch, my biggest issue is the lack of outlined depth. There's very little to be said of liberty aside from 'we liberate people sometimes because good', and Enlightenment has been historically lorded over by gatekeepers who really had nothing of value behind the curtain of FAINTSMILE and madlibs strung together. With our cosmic plane just being a squelching mess with no figureheads, there's nothing to really aspire to as an embodiment of the org beyond the often flimsy 'For Freedom!' rallying cry.

Even Hallifax, who shares our lack of mobs to emulate on the cosmic level, has embraced the Higher Emotions as a very successful teaching tool. While some would say (and I agree, to a point) that part of Gaudiguch's charm is revelling in that chaos, the lack of a mold, and blazing your own trail, it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of how to appropriately build a character around the love for their org. 'I do what I want and also I drink a lot' just doesn't float my goat, you know? Everyone should love their own people, everyone should love doing their org's version of the Right Thing, but what's beyond that?

There's a lot of really good tidbits lying around, but I've yet to see someone who can bring them together into something that truly is and is of Gaudiguch, at least not without heavy reliance on divine-specific roleplay.

The admin reaction has put me off from hoping the issues will actually be addressed.

Bombs suck, sure. But the fact that in 2020 a text game event isn’t stopped in the PRE-start pit battle when the lag starts and simply delayed 24 hours is mind boggling. I understand that Lusternia doesn’t have the resources as some big ticket MMO but I just cannot fathom how the Staff event was allowed to proceed past the moment it was realized there was an issue of this magnitude. 

First of all, congratulations to Parhelion and friends for enduring that truly awful dumpster fire!

I don't normally have a problem with chem/wood bombs, to be honest. They're certainly a little crazy, but it's easy enough to shield and avoid them under normal circumstances.

That's the problem with today's event, though- they weren't normal circumstances. The only counter-play to those bombs (and no, I don't think it's reasonable or desirable for the whole game to flex to one class for every ascension going forward) was nullified by the game's inability to process the load, and that doesn't make for an engaging, entertaining, or thoughtful experience for anyone involved.

I have zero desire to participate in another ascension and that's really unfortunate because it's such a big deal in the game sense.

Terentia said:

Outside @Lantra's great question about hearing what players like about game lore for building purposes, I am wondering, in order to think about org roleplay: What is one thing that irks you about your org's lore? What is one thing that you love about it? This isn't a question about what you would change, by the way. Simply, I want to know what are the pressure points. 

I'm disappointed in how the caste system was used in Hallifax. Early on after Hallifax was released, it was used to keep warriors/merchants from getting favors for defense or other things aside from making art, even preventing some players from advancing past CR4 if they weren't part of a special clique. There's a perfectly good way to rp the caste system being a way to make sure people understand that all parts of Hallifax are needed to make the city function, but it wasn't presented this way at first.

Getting the staff towards the end and being so lagged that none of my commands went through was probably the most frustrating experience of the ascension for me. I had zero ability to walk to a node despite no enemies being on, hindering, or attacking me. I got the staff and lost it entirely because I had no ability to input commands before it poofed on me for not being at a node. Ciaran got the staff after it reset on me and we never got it off Choros again.

I'm not saying we necessarily would have won, but its beyond frustrating to feel like the lag kept us from really even competing properly in the end, it felt much worse than it did in the beginning of ascension. I paused triggers and was closing the mud client and relogging every 5-10 mins at the end because that felt like the only thing that let me have any ability to input commands.