Best Of
Re: Game Balance
Seriously, Azula's great. I used to do the same thing myself, at just about every timequake, but it gets so frustrating. Also, yes, the inner sea deaths were part of what led to arguments about how pk status works, as I recall. So many times glom/celest kept people from even entering.Sapphira said:As a fairly new character i remember being introduced to the joys of being murdered at the rift to a timequake due to my enemy status to the inner sea. Wasn't even -in- the quake. But as others told me and i will tell others, if you show up to a conflict event, there will be conflict and no one has the right to peacefully get their daily credits and wander on by.
it drives me crazy but i totally admire Azula - she will jump in, bunker down and get her dailies even if they don't have enough to compete and be slippery as hell and half the time if not more often, make it back out alive despite our efforts. Talk about will to live! Love it.
Kethaera
2
Re: Game Balance
No, this has happened in every conflict event. I can still remember being frustrated with Glom doing this to me every time and figuring out ways around it - when possible.Ayisdra said:
TIL, I really only saw it happening in revolts a few times (and figured it was less about denying the orgpoints and more about stopping them from getting a foothold)
Kethaera
1
Re: Game Balance
None of this leads to a solution to a problem that has occurred for years. Some of those who left were likely to anyway, given that they only started playing again right before the a-word. Some others, like myself, likely gave up on your side due to the constant bad attitude and refusal to move forward, among other issues. I'm sure the admin could have done some things differently, but so could you.Ayisdra said:And telling our side to 'get over it' by saying this means the game is just going to stay the same.
The decision has wrecked our side's trust in Orael/admin. It has killed a lot of people's motivation to sign in, while raising your sides motiviation, and has led to the current numbers imbalance.
Kethaera
1
Re: Game Balance
Rehashing ascension and the decision made is beyond flogging a dead horse. We've heard it all by now several times. Can we avoid the dreaded A word for now?
Sapphira
5
Re: Game Balance
We're not ignoring the Ascension debacle; it definitely pushed things further. But the issues with the game's conflict philosophy have existed before it, so it shouldn't be the be-all end-all of the discussion.Xenthos said:I believe I already stated that I felt the Glomdoring discussion was not really relevant to this thread; I have no interest in starting my own thread on it, I was simply replying to your continued raising of the topic. I'm happy to let it go too!To the other matter though, the state of the game post-Ascension is a critical component and completely on-topic. Attempting to /ignore it means that you're not going to see any improvement whatsoever. If you're serious about addressing the game meta-balance, we're going to have to have buy-in from everyone, including the administration, to actually sit down and see what can be done to mend fences.
Furthermore, it should be noted that players were not without fault; after all, it was players who chose to maximize the poor way that the game's engine handled group effects (via bard songs and chemwood bombs). As you have said, the players warned the admins about these issues, implying that the players knew of them. Yet, despite this, players still exploited these issues and thus fulfilled the prophecy.
If you are adamant in revisiting the administration's response to Ascension, then maybe we could ask for a more radical approach. This could be by publicly reprimanding the specific players who intentionally exploited the lag issues, at the very least. But I don't believe that will be conducive to the game, at all. Hence, it is my personal opinion that instead of refocusing on Ascension, we turn our attention to the larger conflict philosophy and systems in place and how we can change them to be better for the game as a whole.
Mboagn
4
Re: Game Balance
Everiine said:Ascension was by no means the beginning of the problem. Heck, this started all the way back when combat was retooled with buffs and vitals on a 1-10 system, which sounded awesome--until the very next announcement was the release of a plethora of artifacts to circumvent the balancing being done, leading to yet another Pay-to-Win scenario. The growing imbalance since then hasn't been addressed. I'd already given up on combat by then, but could still pop in to do something useful in raid defenses or villages. Can't survive anything now.
This is a huge thing. I'm fine with the artifact rune being something that can push you to 13/13, this part is fine as long as it is within the system. It is something anyone can work towards and it caps everyone else.
But now we have handfuls of buffs outside the bodyscan system. We have perks now that raise the limit to /16.
The combat overhaul was suppose to reduce the number of affs (I know the original plan of 40, 10 per cure, might have been too few given how many skills there are, but now we are creeping back into too many.
Things need to go back to the original vision of the combat overhaul - simplifying combat (ie limiting how many affs exist) and capping buffs (ie everything in the bodyscan system of 1-10 with 11-13 being artifacts.). Every major promo seems like it is adding some new thing that goes around these ideas.
Ayisdra
2
Re: Game Balance
Ascension was by no means the beginning of the problem. Heck, this started all the way back when combat was retooled with buffs and vitals on a 1-10 system, which sounded awesome--until the very next announcement was the release of a plethora of artifacts to circumvent the balancing being done, leading to yet another Pay-to-Win scenario. The growing imbalance since then hasn't been addressed. I'd already given up on combat by then, but could still pop in to do something useful in raid defenses or villages. Can't survive anything now.
Everiine
2
Re: Game Balance
1. Rather than jumping immediately to defending Glomdoring, you could consider the observation in context with everything else. As it is, I mention it solely because someone else did. Before I brought it up, the requirements to be unenemied were in conflict. When there are a lot of people in an org, high demands to join aren't necessarily a problem, assuming that progress can be made and there are people to interact with. When it's locked behind "you must talk to this one person who logs in every third February 29th" - the waiting is more a problem, imo, than the actual requirements.Xenthos said:I think we can safely dispense with that as being meaningful- Glomdoring had a healthy population for a very long time, and grew it with the restrictions we have in place (which I don't think are so onerous personally, but that discussion is not really relevant to this thread). The recent state of the game has nothing to do with "how easy it is to join an organization" and everything to do with "gamemaster decisions."The sequence of events really boil down to:1) The administration chose to turn a blind eye to an enormous game imbalance and hoped it would solve itself.2) They were warned that Ascension (the most important conflict of the game) would be a mess, and chose to run ahead with it anyways.3) Ascension was a mess.4) The results of the Ascension got overturned by GM fiat.So where do you go looking forward from there? I can't think of anything that the gamemasters have done which has tried to reach out to the people disaffected by their decisions. I can't point to anything that says "Hey, we really want you to come back, we're going to try to rebuild trust on the conflict system." It's just looked like more... waiting, hoping that players will do something. The only thing conflict-related thing in any manner whatsoever has been SSC improvements that I've seen, but that's kind of like closing the barn door three months after the horses ran away. SSC's first introduction definitely brought people in, but now that it's already here... the benefits of improvements are still great for those who are still playing, but aren't in any way going to be an incentive to re-engage for those who were already using it before the improvements and who left due to the above sequence of events.Is it really fair to expect the players to try to pick up the slack if the gamemasters have decided to be wholly hands-off since then? Is it really our responsibility to provide PvP entertainment if we no longer find it engaging or worthwhile? It's a whole lot easier to just accept the apparent position of the game (as demonstrated by actions taken); that Lusternia's conflict system is dead & meaningless, you should focus on the other things that still offer entertainment, and if you're here for PvP conflict you might as well just move along and find some other game.In a sign of lessons-not-learned: They're already talking about the next Ascension while still not having dealt with the aftermath of the last one... which loops around back to one of my first points here. If they run it again, even with adjustments, while the state of the game is anywhere near this, it's going to be a mess and will just muck the game up even more than it currently is.In an earlier post I did suggest some form of a town hall, reach-out, or something of the sort to try to see how to move forward and re-engage players they've lost. I am not aware of this happening? Maybe it's just too late at this point, anyways. It's been a long time. They should at least still try something though, because (to answer my own question earlier) it's not fair or right to lay that solely on the players. We're at this point because of the GMs' decisions, so they need to be part of any solution.Edit: I actually have read the signup post for the anniversary wargames now, and I have to give the admin team kudos for that; it's at least an attempt to shake things up, because I didn't really expect much from wargames as they are traditionally run. To my statement earlier where I couldn't point to "one thing," there is now this one thing to point at. It will be interesting to see if they try to shake things up for Battlechess as well.
Whether that's true in Glomdoring currently I'm not 100% sure, given that I haven't attempted to join. It does appear to me that Magnagora is easier to join than most orgs, and that having enemy statuses removed is also generally easier. And this is certainly an issue in Hallifax, if only because of chronic apathy and low population.
2. My impression is that a lot of those who perceive themselves negatively affected by the last ascension will accept no result less than the outcome to be reversed. Since that's not going to happen, I don't see how this is productive or what you even expect at this point. This post was not about ascension anyway, but about how to address a problem that keeps happening in Lusternia, even when the admin aren't ruining your fun.
3. I suspect it's more of a community issue anyway. When you constantly view the other side as the enemy, you are less willing to join opposing orgs. I know that's at least part of my reasoning behind not joining SL orgs - not knowing people on that side very well, or in some cases, knowing them just well enough.
"it's not fair or right to lay that solely on the players."
- I mean, as a player, I can blame whoever or whatever I want for anything in the game. Not sure how it's unfair.
Kethaera
4
Re: Game Balance
I think we can safely dispense with that as being meaningful- Glomdoring had a healthy population for a very long time, and grew it with the restrictions we have in place (which I don't think are so onerous personally, but that discussion is not really relevant to this thread). The recent state of the game has nothing to do with "how easy it is to join an organization" and everything to do with "gamemaster decisions."
The sequence of events really boil down to:
1) The administration chose to turn a blind eye to an enormous game imbalance and hoped it would solve itself.
2) They were warned that Ascension (the most important conflict of the game) would be a mess, and chose to run ahead with it anyways.
3) Ascension was a mess.
4) The results of the Ascension got overturned by GM fiat.
So where do you go looking forward from there? I can't think of anything that the gamemasters have done which has tried to reach out to the people disaffected by their decisions. I can't point to anything that says "Hey, we really want you to come back, we're going to try to rebuild trust on the conflict system." It's just looked like more... waiting, hoping that players will do something. The only thing conflict-related thing in any manner whatsoever has been SSC improvements that I've seen, but that's kind of like closing the barn door three months after the horses ran away. SSC's first introduction definitely brought people in, but now that it's already here... the benefits of improvements are still great for those who are still playing, but aren't in any way going to be an incentive to re-engage for those who were already using it before the improvements and who left due to the above sequence of events.
Is it really fair to expect the players to try to pick up the slack if the gamemasters have decided to be wholly hands-off since then? Is it really our responsibility to provide PvP entertainment if we no longer find it engaging or worthwhile? It's a whole lot easier to just accept the apparent position of the game (as demonstrated by actions taken); that Lusternia's conflict system is dead & meaningless, you should focus on the other things that still offer entertainment, and if you're here for PvP conflict you might as well just move along and find some other game.
In a sign of lessons-not-learned: They're already talking about the next Ascension while still not having dealt with the aftermath of the last one... which loops around back to one of my first points here. If they run it again, even with adjustments, while the state of the game is anywhere near this, it's going to be a mess and will just muck the game up even more than it currently is.
In an earlier post I did suggest some form of a town hall, reach-out, or something of the sort to try to see how to move forward and re-engage players they've lost. I am not aware of this happening? Maybe it's just too late at this point, anyways. It's been a long time. They should at least still try something though, because (to answer my own question earlier) it's not fair or right to lay that solely on the players. We're at this point because of the GMs' decisions, so they need to be part of any solution.
Edit: I actually have read the signup post for the anniversary wargames now, and I have to give the admin team kudos for that; it's at least an attempt to shake things up, because I didn't really expect much from wargames as they are traditionally run. To my statement earlier where I couldn't point to "one thing," there is now this one thing to point at. It will be interesting to see if they try to shake things up for Battlechess as well.
Xenthos
4
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