Best Of
Re: Gurashi Draws: An Autobiography
Drawtober 18: @Terentia was so sweet to pay my good bug a visit and wound up giving Bizi many pets...
Drawtober 19: ?
Drawtober 20: @Mysrai, but Owl Shaped. Gurashi had a most excellent visit with Them recently.
Drawtober 19: ?
Drawtober 20: @Mysrai, but Owl Shaped. Gurashi had a most excellent visit with Them recently.
Gurashi
8
Re: Lusternian Divine AMA
1. The previous Terentia was very zap-happy, which sort of gave her this reputation of being kind of aggressive, I think. I don't really like playing aggressive types (so what does that mean being a Warrior?!), so I looked at a bunch of notes and tried to reason out why Terentia might have acted like that from a story perspective. I think in contrast, my Terentia is a lot more calm and collected? She is less concerned with going to war and more about strengthening her team. At least for me, there are narrative reasons for that, especially when we take into consideration what it means to "go into the Void." I think I am still filling out her armour, so to speak, so who knows whether I have, in fact, overcome anything!Eve said:Maybe I'll ask some here. Y'all made me think this afternoon, so hopefully these make you think too!
1. For those of you who whom took up a God or Goddess that had been previously held, what was the biggest attribute about them that made you nervous? How did you overcome it?
2. Whenever I read logs, its kind of second nature to read how Evette would read into a situation. Do you catch yourselves doing this with your previous versions of yourselves still, or did that change overtime?
3. What would you consider your biggest accomplishments as a divine and what sets them apart from others?
2. I find this really interesting because I don't think I ever really had a sort of bifurcation like you describe. In the throes of roleplaying, I don't feel like I have a Terentia voice guiding me to respond in one way or another. I think we are pretty glued together. But, I will say, I think that is because a lot of my interactions with other players don't really draw out or point to anything in Terentia's history. I think people think they know who is Terentia, so I haven't had many instances where I needed to pause, step back, and say: "How does Terentia respond?"
3. I still think I am working on my stuff, that I am not sure if I've accomplished anything yet!
Terentia
7
Re: Lusternian Divine AMA
1. I think it's fair to say that as far as Crumkane's character attributes are concerned, I knew exactly what they consisted of and where I wanted them to go. The biggest concern I think anyone would have - certainly in my case - in piloting a role that had previously had an owner is ensuring consistency without sacrificing your own enjoyment or vision. I am not circa 2015 Crumkane - we have differing senses of humour, different ideas of what particularly his niche is in dealing with the varied mortals and immortals of Lusternia, and differing approaches for how he even communicates. (For instance, it's quite possible that not everything Crumkane says is the truth at face value, and that's causing a bit of confusion!)Eve said:Maybe I'll ask some here. Y'all made me think this afternoon, so hopefully these make you think too!
1. For those of you who whom took up a God or Goddess that had been previously held, what was the biggest attribute about them that made you nervous? How did you overcome it?
2. Whenever I read logs, its kind of second nature to read how Evette would read into a situation. Do you catch yourselves doing this with your previous versions of yourselves still, or did that change overtime?
3. What would you consider your biggest accomplishments as a divine and what sets them apart from others?
The things that drew me to this role are different from the things that spawned his creation under that former admin, and while I can recognise the differences and stand by my own interpretation, I cannot do so in a way that alienates those characters that have been involved with Crumkane during the intervening time period. It's a little nerve-wracking to attempt to stay consistent, to 'recognise' these players that maybe you haven't interacted with in a personal capacity before and who almost assuredly will realise you are blowing smoke up their proverbial chimney, but who will likewise hopefully handwave the initial period of awkwardness as you're able to grow into the role. I count myself quite fortunate that everyone I've had the lovely opportunity to interact with thus far has been both exceedingly gracious and incredibly patient with my antics!
2. I'm a bit with @Lantra on this one - we spend quite a lot of time learning about our characters and in some cases building up their lore and personalities from scratch well before you'll ever see us pop out of the sky over Avechna's Peak. As a result, in most cases, it becomes incredibly easy to consider the God's reaction to certain situations. For myself, I only ever played one character, and I don't believe I'm giving anything away to say I was quite happy to wallow in anonymous mediocrity, so it's quite easy to divorce myself from thinking like them. (This also helps when we possess certain mobs during events or spontaneous interactions. Sometimes you've got to be enormously quick to think on your feet and bounce between a few different mindsets or personalities - see Nepenthe's interview of Tantus and Kariv!)
3. I've got a magnanimous answer and a selfish answer to this question. To echo Mysrai and Lantra, I'm so grateful to engage with players who are interested in RPing with me. Lantra has laughed firsthand at my misfortune when a quick late-night "Hi I'm alive!" poke to my Order or Gaudiguch turns into two hours of running around trying to track down a scientist for not-at-all nefarious purposes. My favourite sort of interactions to have are the unstructured and spontaneous, and boy, I've been given it in spades, and I adore them all!
Somewhat more selfishly, but no less truthfully, I feel it is something of an accomplishment to have the privilege of being an administrator and a God for Lusternia. The process is not a grueling drudgery, but it is a process, and a certain level of dedication is required to pass muster and make it to the end. I'm very glad to have put in the work, because I am often able to get distracted, but Lusternia has given a great deal to me personally over the years, and I find I am proud and thankful to be able to give back to it, now.
Crumkane
11
Re: Absence Thread
Not an extended absence per se, but-
Currently in the middle of the (nightmarish) process of buying a house, and all of the nonsense around it. For the next month or so I should still be around fairly regularly, but I'll have a bit less time and a bit more absences now and then. I'll still always have immediate access to messages, so if you can't catch me for something, that's the way to reach me.
Currently in the middle of the (nightmarish) process of buying a house, and all of the nonsense around it. For the next month or so I should still be around fairly regularly, but I'll have a bit less time and a bit more absences now and then. I'll still always have immediate access to messages, so if you can't catch me for something, that's the way to reach me.
Kailanna
7
Re: Lusternian Divine AMA
Thax said:
(No, but the thought of diminutive Thax made me laugh too much not to share it with you all)
Images of a robotic Veigar here.
STOP LAUGHING! I AM EVIL!
Shaddus
5
Re: Game Balance
Kali said:I was wondering if it would be possible to expand the recognize command to also cover combat related things, so you could recognize people for things like fighting well and bravely even if they lost, or for stepping up to lead or to fill a role your team needs, or for being sportsmanlike, or for taking risks to save others, or whatnot.
It is my hope that something like this would help to take away from the negative emotions tied up in a loss by helping to provide an avenue for, and hopefully normalizing, positive feedback for people that are out there doing their best.
I would love to recognize the everloving crap out of the other side in fights. Big +1 from me.
A slight mechanical reward, and will help to pervade an atmosphere of sportsmanship rather than the silent shutout I'm sure a lot of people feel when they get shut down by larger numbers.
The side with fewer players will see those individual players more likely to get recognized, and in greater amounts each, so it's even got an anti-snowball effect.
Just spitballing, maybe even remove the automatic TQ dailycredits and instead give the player a timequake recognize to hand those dailycredits off to an enemy combatant or something.
Ahh, but I'm rambling a bit, and I'm sure it's open to abuse. And it's not a simple thing. But I really, really like the concept.
Even just opening up the recognize requirements to allow PK justification, I suppose, would allow this in effect. But one of the things I like most about it is that regardless of how small this change would be, it's something the Admin could let the players do to move the needle just a little bit on a regular basis, make things just a little more palatable, etc.
Kaikazu
6
Re: Game Balance
Just some thoughts:
The mechanical bonus of a TA is not anything to actually write home about. The emotional response to the raising of Ixion was not related to the mechanics as to what he received, but rather the perception of what that bonus means. There really is not going to be anyway for an admin to solve that issue, the perceptive value of what a TA brings to their side greatly outweighs mechanically what they are able to do. In this particular instance, Zagreus as the Chaos TA is underwhelming because the Chaos powers that he got for free are mostly useless. So no, a TA isn't a weapon, the only thing it does is speed up Domoth claims, so no, IHC didn't receive anything because Ixion with Death Seal is more useful than Zagreus as Chaos Ascendant.
Lusternia mechanics have never been balanced. As someone that has been here for many different eras of combat, it has yet to be balanced and will hopefully never be balanced. Balanced is boring. A balanced game is a single player Mario game where still they find tricks years after release.
A game like this needs to be treated more like a community, as we are a small group of people that have converged together. If you want your community to grow, you have to put in the work to do so. It has been brought up before, but if everyone knew beforehand that Ascension was going to be a problem, that some skills would only make things worse, then why did you design your strategy around that? Yes all your hard work Pre-Ascension should be thrown away if it was designed around making the community worse for people because you abused a skill. Where are all these people that abused Creeping since then? How come there have been no Creeping bombs in any way like you used before? How come everyone classflexed to new classes once Ascension ended?
Because they knew the skill was broken and still used it, and haven't done anything about it since then. People are not using Creeping because they want it to still be good for the next Ascension. And to squash the comment of "Oh what can I do? Envoy reports haven't been reopened yet?"
Here is my personal anecdote of taking responsibility for the community. I am the one that got Climax nerfed, I saw that it was easily abused, I made a log and I sent it to Orael. I recognized something was broken, I knew that it was too easy too abuse and then I classflexed out of Dramaturgy until it was fixed. Climax was changed to its previous form in 2018, I returned July 4th 2020. It was nerfed by September. We have previous combat history and skills to draw from, using room wide attacks that stack and stun from a distance has never been okay since the beginning of the game, even more so during lag. This type of skill was solved years ago when Boulderblast got nerfed into dust and should've never been allowed to be remade. Don't listen to those defending Creeping, they don't know how combat works.
I saw some talk about IHC needing to tone it down and apply self-restraint.
Yes, like you don't want us to raid Celestia? Check, we really don't outside of an occasional crafting Fain angel cloaks.
We haven't killed any of the Avatars or Supernals, even after we easily did it and only did it that once.
Some of us have even made alts in Shadowlight to help you out.
I even self-nerfed my own class for Shadowlight.
After SL had ran from the combat field, we went to the next best battlefield in Orgcredits, and you guys have ran from that too.
You were not defeated by the mechanics or an admin decision, you defeated yourselves.
Silvanus
7
Re: Game Balance
Something caught my eye a few pages ago, and this pertains to the culture of the game overall. Ayisdra was talking about how it's frustrating in flares that Magnagora camps docks and makes it impossible to get orgpoints.
Complete denial of resources is something that worked into the culture more or less beginning at timequake release (to this degree). Some of the people that are directly responsible for instituting this vicious way of playing the game have now quit. People like Snald and Tarken essentially built up this toxic back and forth and now they've left their side high and dry because Ixion got a fancy name change and some extra power weight, and faster domoth speed.
So ridiculous. I know it seems petty to blame the "losers" (not losers at all, see Parhelion), but Glomdoring spent several years pissing off most of the playerbase and now that behavior is coming back to roost.
The worst part being that Glomdoring has a completely different culture and playerbase now. They're being punished for the sins of people that decided to jump ship before they could get their just desserts.
Complete denial of resources is something that worked into the culture more or less beginning at timequake release (to this degree). Some of the people that are directly responsible for instituting this vicious way of playing the game have now quit. People like Snald and Tarken essentially built up this toxic back and forth and now they've left their side high and dry because Ixion got a fancy name change and some extra power weight, and faster domoth speed.
So ridiculous. I know it seems petty to blame the "losers" (not losers at all, see Parhelion), but Glomdoring spent several years pissing off most of the playerbase and now that behavior is coming back to roost.
The worst part being that Glomdoring has a completely different culture and playerbase now. They're being punished for the sins of people that decided to jump ship before they could get their just desserts.
Maligorn
5
(c) Iron Realms Entertainment 2012.