Monks are a monster I have not yet approached. I have some ideas, but I believe they will be, by far, the most difficult to balance due to the nature of momentum allowing such a wide spread of affliction potential. I've considered raising the floor and lowering the ceiling in terms of the ka allowed with each momentum tier. I've considered removing wounding entirely as a req for afflictions or making it more important (a la warriors) in their afflictions. It's up in the air for now.
I've added a tiny dirty system to the mechanics forums here if any of you want something to work with. Keep in mind, it's in no way optimal, but it should help get an idea of how everything fits together and, I'll keep working on it.
I'm willing to do little bits here and there and roll with whatever you all are going with, as far as the overhaul goes, but I'll say again, I think perhaps the best bet is to keep our affliction system in place, tweak it and look at classes individually.
When the overhaul was first announced, the affliction system, from my understanding (and I could be wrong) seemed to want to address two things:
(1) The issue with multiple classes sharing the same affliction
(2) Complexity
The attractive point of #1 is that it means that for example, warriors might be able to get to blunt affliction level 5 but monks might only ever get to level 4, which means that if warriors were OP at level 5, we could nerf that without weakening monks unintentionally. This sort of thing sounds like a great idea for balancing...though in practice it seems as if all we're really doing is just throwing afflictions under fewer cures and in some ways the same issues are still there...
For example, if blunt level 2 needed a small tweak for warriors that would be deleterious for monks, we have the same issue on the table again.
I really disagree that the current affliction system created too much of a problem for entry. Nobody had to memorize cures once they had a system. Most of lusternia's complexity arises from the fact that we have a multitude of classes out there with a number of skillsets available to them each, which means the player has to learn them all at the end of the day. I don't have any clue how you can simplify that without taking away the fun from the game from those of us who enjoy the complexity, learning curve and skill gap. Perhaps only if you retired many classes and skillsets.
A lot of the problems we had with the current system, we couldn't fix as we'd like through special reports and envoy reports because we were limited in the scope of what we could do. We may have made a few drastic changes here and there (the most recent example being the replacement of choke), but in general they were mostly within some confines or another.
Not every class really needed a complete overhaul. For example, warriors in their current incarnation just need some things to be standardized - armour values, weapon stats and racial stats. If there were less gaps across the board for these things, they'd be fine save for some very fixable spec-specific issues.
I think completely overhauling the affliction system might be too ambitious and it'll require way more work than I think we're really ready to take on. Even now feedback from players is poor and with the experienced population dwindling, I'm not sure we can pull off such a huge project together. I know that sounds negative and not very helpful, but I'm trying to be realistic here.
If we fixed stats, damage and buffs as you described I think things will be a lot better in the current game. If we take this desire to overhaul classes to allow us the freedoms we didn't have with the envoy system to really look at a class from the bottom up and fix its entire concept if necessary...we could be on the right track. But right now, the entire project feels nebulous and aimless, frankly and requiring work far outside of our reach.
That's my two cents, and I mean no disrespect. It's your game and I wish you only the best with the endeavour.
Currently, yes. As far as I can tell there are no limb specific afflictions for warriors (I could be wrong, I will go back and check to be sure).
I have not eyeballed the code but I assume it will be after like it is now. If it's not, it should be.
Wait.. no specific limb afflictions means no point to target limbs? So we just jab jab jab to uplift wound level to increase the chance for some list of standard afflictions? No limb specific afflictions, no need to parry stance specific limbs? Or am I mistaken?
I think completely overhauling the affliction system might be too ambitious and it'll require way more work than I think we're really ready to take on. Even now feedback from players is poor and with the experienced population dwindling, I'm not sure we can pull off such a huge project together. I know that sounds negative and not very helpful, but I'm trying to be realistic here.
I thought I was the only one thinking this.
It raises the question: do we even get the ability to ask to tone this overhaul down? Or are the powers that be going over Estarra's head and forcing our Lusternia's coders to work on this?
I'd much rather see our coders working on fixing quests and making new ones and overall dazzling our incoming newbies so that they'll stay and we can start building the population up again while fixing the things in combat that need fixing. Also I want the Plots newsboard back, jeez. I dunno. Maybe I'm just an uninformed pleb.
Eh, I don't see why we should "tone back" this overhaul, especially when this "tone back" suggestion isn't even specific as to what parts need what change.
And as mentioned, it would be difficult to say what parts need any kind of change, much less what kind of change, from what is currently proposed, without the overhaul even being anywhere near completion.
If you mean to scrap the overhaul completely, you'll find that there is plenty of support still for the overhaul, even if there is also support for not going ahead. There's no reason, I'd say, to go back on the overhaul without a better argument than "because I don't like it."
The arguments FOR an overhaul are pretty extensive, perhaps the current incarnation isn't exactly to the design of what spawned the suggestion in the first place, but Estarra would not have let it go ahead if the original demand had not reached a critical mass. I don't think it's very productive in any sense of the word to start calling on the admin to give up, or cut back, or "tone down" on the overhaul at this point. If they do feel it is too much of a resource hog for too little benefit, they can make the decision when they feel it warrants it. It's a bit too early to be chopping off anything at this point, though.
You have the ability to ask whatever you feel necessary to ask. The types of answers those questions warrant really depends on the question itself. For example, I have no idea what "tone the overhaul down," means, as it is a very vague question. As a result, I have no answer.
I'd like if possible a breakdown of the classes and skillsets detailing the overall goal the admin have for them, example: the goal of bard skillset x should be to support instakill y. More explanation helps give an overall goal to try and build towards instead of throwing whatever and seeing what sticks.
We have not rewritten how any of the guilds function, so I'm not certain what you mean. Bards, more or less, function as they did before. Octave, aurics, passive songs, etc.
Eh, I don't see why we should "tone back" this overhaul, especially when this "tone back" suggestion isn't even specific as to what parts need what change.
And as mentioned, it would be difficult to say what parts need any kind of change, much less what kind of change, from what is currently proposed, without the overhaul even being anywhere near completion.
If you mean to scrap the overhaul completely, you'll find that there is plenty of support still for the overhaul, even if there is also support for not going ahead. There's no reason, I'd say, to go back on the overhaul without a better argument than "because I don't like it."
The arguments FOR an overhaul are pretty extensive, perhaps the current incarnation isn't exactly to the design of what spawned the suggestion in the first place, but Estarra would not have let it go ahead if the original demand had not reached a critical mass. I don't think it's very productive in any sense of the word to start calling on the admin to give up, or cut back, or "tone down" on the overhaul at this point. If they do feel it is too much of a resource hog for too little benefit, they can make the decision when they feel it warrants it. It's a bit too early to be chopping off anything at this point, though.
I can't tell if you're being deliberately obtuse, or you didn't bother to read Rivius's post (which is what I'm referencing also).
I don't think the affliction system needs an overhaul into this extremely dry affliction level thing. I would much rather see h/m/e buff stacking addressed, the way warriors have to buy several artifacts to be even remotely relevant in combat, and certain abilities tweaked but not a huge, honking overhaul.
However, I do understand that I'm very uninformed about this, and therefore would like to do some research into what brought about the overhaul in the first place. My first character isn't Maligorn, but I had a long hiatus from Lusternia in which I missed the reasoning and the time and design behind the original decision. Can anyone point me towards relevant overhaul Announce posts? Particularly the first few.
I certainly read Rivius' posts. I didn't have much problem with it. Perhaps I used the wrong words when I mentioned the "don't like it" part, but the idea is that even if there are players who prefer to cut back the ambitious reach of the overhaul, there are similarly players who would love to see it achieve what it originally set out to do, and perhaps even more, and that both sides have perfectly valid reasons. Therefore, it makes no sense to go back on the project and start chopping off major portions of it at this stage, when the framework is only barely just in place, and we can hardly even see what it will actually look like when complete.
I can't remember if the original discussions that eventually led to the overhaul are in this forums or the old ones. The decision was made during one of the major meets, when players met with Estarra personally and through face-to-face talks, convinced him of the need to. If I remember correctly, he promised to think about it, and not long after the meet, announced the decision to go ahead with it.
Though it has been noted previously by others, I will reiterate that the overhaul is not an opportunity to air all your mechanical grievances. While the primary goal of the overhaul isn't a re-balance of problematic mechanics, it certainly provides an opportunity to address some. The more you work with me in the direction I need you to work, the more I can address in the long run. The more time spent providing laundry lists of problems, the less we can actually accomplish. I have reached out to the players to provide more insight and perspective to the project than I alone will be able to come up with. I want you to be involved. That being said, while you can direct the flow of this river, it's ultimately flowing downhill, and at the bottom of the hill is the completed overhaul.
If you have not spent some time in the shells, I encourage you to do so and provide specific feedback as to successes and failures of these shells. The sooner bards are in a reasonable place, the sooner we can move on.
We have not rewritten how any of the guilds function, so I'm not certain what you mean. Bards, more or less, function as they did before. Octave, aurics, passive songs, etc.
For some guilds/archetypes/skillsets, it's never been entirely clear what the focus is intended to be, or what the point of certain abilities are. We think we have a handle on it, but then are suddenly blindsided by a report rejection reason or solution 4 that makes no sense in the context of what we thought the point of the skillset is. Sometimes the intended strategy is clear... but non-viable, gimmicky, or excessively frustrating for one reason or another, leaving combatants mystified. You'll have an instakill, but no support for it, or the afflictions look like they would support xyz strategy but actually don't by some quirk ( or by a weird, non-stacking choice of afflictions).
I've voiced my opinion (at length) on the current affliction-system-based overhaul and how I believe it could be re-reworked (with relatively minimal changes) into a serviceable state, but ultimatly: I would be much more interested in overhauling how archetypes work, rather than how afflictions work. The most boring skills in the game are those in which afflictions, and not unique mechanics, are the star. That's your runes/hexes/dramaturgy/curses/evileye skills (wait, are some of those even ours? /shrug, they're all the same), that offer little if anything in the way of interesting or unique abilities, generally used only to spam a few OP abilities and combos and nothing else, ho-hum. Overhaulling in such a way that those types of skillsets and that focus on slightly-different vehicles for delivering the same handful of afflictions with slight variations sounds great.
With the shells specifically, my main concern is that for all the shells I tested, there were one or two skills they wanted to spam to win in short order. For the glamours shells, that skill tended to be majorseventh, for the aeon shells - AEON, with some delusions mixed in. By spamming the music skill, not only are their song effects guaranteed to always hit, but their health totals go down, increasing the speed at which passive damage (For those who have them) will kill the target. For the aeon guilds, it spams aeon, in a way that is stronger than aeon's current iteration because it's harder to cure everything quickly.
I'm actually on vacation in the middle of the Caribbean but checking in (on a poor connection no less). I'd like to just reiterate that the main focus of the overhaul is redoing all afflictions and defenses. My hope was always to migrate to the new affliction and defense system onto a database system to enable much greater flexibility and control while streamlining the number of afflictions and defenses into a cohesive system. To that end, we weren't necessarily going to redesign every skill in-game which perhaps was causing confusion; rather, we were hoping to maintain the skills as-is where possible and migrating them to the new system. But while that sounds simple it requires a complete rewriting of combat architecture, including all damage and healing routines. Thus, I'm really hoping you'll help Saesh work on this end goal.
Again, redesign of entire skills and skillsets is not the goal; rather, it is the focus on how defenses and afflictions operate. However, some skillsets (like warrior weapons and monk combat) may need some rework simply because of how they operate. We've actually finished one complete skillset for warrior weapons (bonecrusher) but we haven't released it yet pending getting the bard shells in workable order.
I'd much rather see our coders working on fixing quests and making new ones and overall dazzling our incoming newbies so that they'll stay and we can start building the population up again while fixing the things in combat that need fixing. Also I want the Plots newsboard back, jeez. I dunno. Maybe I'm just an uninformed pleb.
Quests are still being thought up and tweaked and built during the Overhaul.
Well bards have been changed in a pretty dramatic way. They have been moved away from mana/ego damage kills. Which I could see making sense possibly because mana and ego damage attacks don't respect dmp and can contribute to mana based insta kills while doing health damage. Instead they have been moved to damage with a new way of auric afflictions to help achieve that goal. Which is cool.
Affliction classes, in general, are going to be troublesome since they can stack on each other much like the way multiple warriors could with wounds. Since you can only cure the aff on top you are locking in the ones underneath. Before you could usually cure all afflictions in matter of moments. For example 4 of our 5 plague affs can be simultaneously cured.
The Cacophony are going to be particularly difficult in this matter as they have been centered around giving lots of minor afflictions. If cure balances are more meaningful then minor affs can become major problems much faster. Or it could go in the other direction end up being irrelevant in 1 v 1 and only helpful if in groups. It was kind of like hunger attrition, either it did nothing or it completely wrecked you.
I would like to throw out my support behind finding creative solutions or adjusting the directions of guilds rather than just watering down the problem children. Taking the time to find not only a solution but the best solution will benefit everyone down the line.
In this case it might just be toning down (or removing it and replace it with something else) the cure denial that was put in place when plague affs were easier to cure. Or maybe have it only use a fraction of the normal cure balance when it triggers. I actually thought that aeon would be stripped from the game for similar reasons....
Druids will need a fairly major rework, because sap will be a non-possibility with the new affliction system (or outside of sap, druids will need to be far weaker than they already are). There are so many major implications of the new affliction system as it stands that many guilds will need to get defacto redesigns or become OP/UP.
EDIT: Melds in general will need a long, hard look. Outside of the stun and forced movement effects, most demesnes (Especially the older ones) don't do much at all on their own, merely assisting other strategies. As @Llandros said, you can usually instantly cure away an entire demesne if you aren't locked up, which won't be a thing anymore. It will be really difficult to balance them in their current incarnation with this type of aff system.
I'd much rather see our coders working on fixing quests and making new ones and overall dazzling our incoming newbies so that they'll stay and we can start building the population up again while fixing the things in combat that need fixing. Also I want the Plots newsboard back, jeez. I dunno. Maybe I'm just an uninformed pleb.
Quests are still being thought up and tweaked and built during the Overhaul.
What about quest bugs? I assume they are being fixed but I have a few Waystation ones sitting at submitted since like ages.
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I'd much rather see our coders working on fixing quests and making new ones and overall dazzling our incoming newbies so that they'll stay and we can start building the population up again while fixing the things in combat that need fixing. Also I want the Plots newsboard back, jeez. I dunno. Maybe I'm just an uninformed pleb.
Quests are still being thought up and tweaked and built during the Overhaul.
What about quest bugs? I assume they are being fixed but I have a few Waystation ones sitting at submitted since like ages.
Quest bugs have always been notoriously rough.
I've got some bugs that have been hanging out for years (my oldest bug-bug has a date of 9/15/2012 on it). Some bugs are a whole lot easier to address, and others kind of sit on the backburner for a while- but such tends to be the way with bugs anyways.
Edit: Quest bugs are harder because quests tend to be written by individuals, some who do not leave enough notes / comments about what they were doing and why. Thus, when the individual leaves / steps down as a volunteer, others do not know how the thing is supposed to work and this makes them very reluctant to try to pick it up because it might break even further.
Druids will need a fairly major rework, because sap will be a non-possibility with the new affliction system (or outside of sap, druids will need to be far weaker than they already are). There are so many major implications of the new affliction system as it stands that many guilds will need to get defacto redesigns or become OP/UP.
EDIT: Melds in general will need a long, hard look. Outside of the stun and forced movement effects, most demesnes (Especially the older ones) don't do much at all on their own, merely assisting other strategies. As @Llandros said, you can usually instantly cure away an entire demesne if you aren't locked up, which won't be a thing anymore. It will be really difficult to balance them in their current incarnation with this type of aff system.
Let's tone down the dramatic rhetoric about redesigns and focus on what is in front of us. You can't possibly know what the state of druids post overhaul will be, largely because I don't know what they will be because the skills have not be rewritten yet. It's unproductive at best and counterproductive at worst.
I am looking at the overall implications of cure denial style skills and how they interact with the new cure balance.
One small request from Knights, and I suppose Monks if they do have to still exist post overhaul, that would probably result in firstborn children being named after you.
Can we please have natural miss rates removed, gone, dying a brutal horrible death, non existent and no longer a thing, please?
The divine voice
of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations,
Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
Fixing the combat situation in Lusternia is extremely complex due to Lusternia's extensive and complex nature. There is so much in Lusternia and to try and pinpoint the problem on one single issue would be futile. The problem lies in all the small issues creating a big issue.
As a long time player of Lusternia, I truly love Lusternia. If I didn't, I wouldn't continue playing, it's quite simple. I've been a long time player of other IRE's as well, my first being Achaea, which I started playing nearly 13 years ago.
I feel as though the overhaul is a noble act to try and fix Lusternia. With all due respect, however, I feel as though it is the wrong way to go about fixing the issues at hand. To fix the big underlying problems would be a time consuming process, as we know due to the fact of how long it is taking for the overhaul to take effect. I'd like to state what Rivius said, that if we just looked at each class individually, we could fix the game as a whole. But that in itself is just one of the minor issues. I'd like to offer my opinion on the issues which are helping make Lusternia as broken as it is now, and while I might not even list every single thing, it's what I am able to think of off the top of my head as of right now.
-Too many STAT increasing buffs/skills
-Too many H/M/E increasing abilities/buffs
-Affliction speed is either too fast or not fast enough to outpace curing for certain classes. I would recommend removing purgative cures and having all cures fall into only eat/smoke herb, apply salve, or focus. Then, as each class gets inspected individually, things can be tweaked which would make affliction speed too fast or too slow and put it in the right direction. This would give affliction classes the affliction momentum they really need right now.
-Allow herb/salve/focus cures to be cured in a certain order, not in random order. As of right now, if you were afflicted with anorexia and impatience, and used smoke coltsfoot to cure, you aren't 100% sure what will be cured first, due to the fact that the curing order is randomized. I would suggest making afflictions cured in a certain order for herbs, salves and focus. This would then create strategy for affliction classes and affliction tracking will now be viable.
-Remove healing scroll. It's simply too much. Sipping health/mana/bromides and eating sparkleberry should be the only two methods of healing your statistics. Healing scroll can be changed to do something else but as far as it goes right now it truly creates a rift between the lowbies and the top tier, especially those who exceed incredible amounts of health.
-With healing scroll, remove/change beast heal health/mana/ego. Simply too much.
-Remove scrub cures. Put ectoplasm as a calamus cure. Remove sap, rework druids to be able to function without sap. Other scrub afflictions like the illuminati entity and Geomancer mud can be changed to herb/salve cures as well. The only thing scrub would cure is slickness (for slitlocks)
-Regeneration abilities are rampant in Lusternia. Most of them should be removed. The fact that it's easy to receive level 3 health/mana/ego regeneration without artifacts is ridiculous. The racial regenerations for standing in taint for viscanti, standing in water for merian, standing in fire for dracnari, etc., should be removed.
-Monks really need to be reworked, and I feel they should function like warriors. Their afflictions should work just like warrior afflictions do in the sense that in order to windpipe or slit throat a target the opponents head must have a set wound requirement. Momentum is just too powerful and it has been since the beginning. Momentum is incredibly flawed, having no middle ground. It's too weak, or it's too powerful. There is no balance.
-Melds need a review as well. Even with all the nerfs they have received, they are still powerful, nearly impenetrable fortresses if done correctly. Movement abilities for melds need a re-looking, whirlpool/current, rubble, windwalls, etc. Melds should be powerful in nature but the fact that they can hinder a group walking through it so well makes them favor the melding side far too much. Again, no middle ground. There is starting to be a resemblance here.
There are way more issues at hand too which I can list but just haven't thought of it yet from the top of my head but this is what I've been able to put together so far. These are just my humble opinions. I feel as though Lusternia's combat situation can be fixed if the administration is willing to work with Lusternia's combatants on all these issues. I say all this with all due respect, and I truly respect the administration's wishes in fixing the world we have grown to know and love. Thank you.
I actually agree with most of the things Thoros has listed, and several things are actually being addressed in the overhaul. Stat and buff stacking is being capped, for example, and I believe healing scroll is being removed (don't quote me on that, that's a ways away). I won't go in to a super detailed discussion regarding melds, monks, and the variety of curatives until we actually reach that point but I will state your concerns are valid and if possible within the framework of the overhaul, they can be addressed.
I also agree with several of the extremes regarding monks, melds, so on and so forth and it is my intention to real them in within the framework of the overhaul rather than a complete redesign. I would disagree that there is not a middle ground. For example, removing lodestone (stun) and rubble, and suddenly a geomancer demense is much less problematic. Not saying that is the avenue I am pursuing, simply an example of how things aren't quite as black and white as they are often painted.
I will reiterate that we are not redesigning archetypes. Druids will retain sap unless it simply can not function within the boundaries of the overhaul and remain a balanced mechanic.
When you're talking about lowering the cap on health/ego, how will this effect bashing? I say this as a recent Demi who is already struggling to boost my stats enough to access 'end game' areas that I want to explore, such as Muud. I'd be happy to accept that as a Mage I'll never be able to sit on Astral solo linking like Karlach lol, but I'd like to think that all quests/areas should be open to me. If we all have less health, will npc damage be reduced accordingly?
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The divine voice of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations, Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
It raises the question: do we even get the ability to ask to tone this overhaul down? Or are the powers that be going over Estarra's head and forcing our Lusternia's coders to work on this?
I'd much rather see our coders working on fixing quests and making new ones and overall dazzling our incoming newbies so that they'll stay and we can start building the population up again while fixing the things in combat that need fixing. Also I want the Plots newsboard back, jeez. I dunno. Maybe I'm just an uninformed pleb.
And as mentioned, it would be difficult to say what parts need any kind of change, much less what kind of change, from what is currently proposed, without the overhaul even being anywhere near completion.
If you mean to scrap the overhaul completely, you'll find that there is plenty of support still for the overhaul, even if there is also support for not going ahead. There's no reason, I'd say, to go back on the overhaul without a better argument than "because I don't like it."
The arguments FOR an overhaul are pretty extensive, perhaps the current incarnation isn't exactly to the design of what spawned the suggestion in the first place, but Estarra would not have let it go ahead if the original demand had not reached a critical mass. I don't think it's very productive in any sense of the word to start calling on the admin to give up, or cut back, or "tone down" on the overhaul at this point. If they do feel it is too much of a resource hog for too little benefit, they can make the decision when they feel it warrants it. It's a bit too early to be chopping off anything at this point, though.
You have the ability to ask whatever you feel necessary to ask. The types of answers those questions warrant really depends on the question itself. For example, I have no idea what "tone the overhaul down," means, as it is a very vague question. As a result, I have no answer.
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I don't think the affliction system needs an overhaul into this extremely dry affliction level thing. I would much rather see h/m/e buff stacking addressed, the way warriors have to buy several artifacts to be even remotely relevant in combat, and certain abilities tweaked but not a huge, honking overhaul.
However, I do understand that I'm very uninformed about this, and therefore would like to do some research into what brought about the overhaul in the first place. My first character isn't Maligorn, but I had a long hiatus from Lusternia in which I missed the reasoning and the time and design behind the original decision. Can anyone point me towards relevant overhaul Announce posts? Particularly the first few.
I can't remember if the original discussions that eventually led to the overhaul are in this forums or the old ones. The decision was made during one of the major meets, when players met with Estarra personally and through face-to-face talks, convinced him of the need to. If I remember correctly, he promised to think about it, and not long after the meet, announced the decision to go ahead with it.
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For some guilds/archetypes/skillsets, it's never been entirely clear what the focus is intended to be, or what the point of certain abilities are. We think we have a handle on it, but then are suddenly blindsided by a report rejection reason or solution 4 that makes no sense in the context of what we thought the point of the skillset is. Sometimes the intended strategy is clear... but non-viable, gimmicky, or excessively frustrating for one reason or another, leaving combatants mystified. You'll have an instakill, but no support for it, or the afflictions look like they would support xyz strategy but actually don't by some quirk ( or by a weird, non-stacking choice of afflictions).
With the shells specifically, my main concern is that for all the shells I tested, there were one or two skills they wanted to spam to win in short order. For the glamours shells, that skill tended to be majorseventh, for the aeon shells - AEON, with some delusions mixed in. By spamming the music skill, not only are their song effects guaranteed to always hit, but their health totals go down, increasing the speed at which passive damage (For those who have them) will kill the target. For the aeon guilds, it spams aeon, in a way that is stronger than aeon's current iteration because it's harder to cure everything quickly.
Again, redesign of entire skills and skillsets is not the goal; rather, it is the focus on how defenses and afflictions operate. However, some skillsets (like warrior weapons and monk combat) may need some rework simply because of how they operate. We've actually finished one complete skillset for warrior weapons (bonecrusher) but we haven't released it yet pending getting the bard shells in workable order.
You have received a new honour! Congratulations! On this day, you have shown your willingness to ensure a bug-free Lusternia for everyone to enjoy. The face of Iosai the Anomaly unfolds before you, and within you grows the knowledge that you have earned the elusive and rare honour of membership in Her Order.
Curio Exchange - A website to help with the trading of curio pieces in Lusternia.
I've got some bugs that have been hanging out for years (my oldest bug-bug has a date of 9/15/2012 on it). Some bugs are a whole lot easier to address, and others kind of sit on the backburner for a while- but such tends to be the way with bugs anyways.
Edit: Quest bugs are harder because quests tend to be written by individuals, some who do not leave enough notes / comments about what they were doing and why. Thus, when the individual leaves / steps down as a volunteer, others do not know how the thing is supposed to work and this makes them very reluctant to try to pick it up because it might break even further.
Can we please have natural miss rates removed, gone, dying a brutal horrible death, non existent and no longer a thing, please?
The divine voice of Avechna, the Avenger reverberates powerfully, "Congratulations, Morkarion, you are the Bringer of Death indeed."
You see Estarra the Eternal shout, "Morkarion is no more! Mourn the mortal! But welcome True Ascendant Karlach, of the Realm of Death!
Fixing the combat situation in Lusternia is extremely complex due to Lusternia's extensive and complex nature. There is so much in Lusternia and to try and pinpoint the problem on one single issue would be futile. The problem lies in all the small issues creating a big issue.
As a long time player of Lusternia, I truly love Lusternia. If I didn't, I wouldn't continue playing, it's quite simple. I've been a long time player of other IRE's as well, my first being Achaea, which I started playing nearly 13 years ago.
I feel as though the overhaul is a noble act to try and fix Lusternia. With all due respect, however, I feel as though it is the wrong way to go about fixing the issues at hand. To fix the big underlying problems would be a time consuming process, as we know due to the fact of how long it is taking for the overhaul to take effect. I'd like to state what Rivius said, that if we just looked at each class individually, we could fix the game as a whole. But that in itself is just one of the minor issues. I'd like to offer my opinion on the issues which are helping make Lusternia as broken as it is now, and while I might not even list every single thing, it's what I am able to think of off the top of my head as of right now.
-Too many STAT increasing buffs/skills
-Too many H/M/E increasing abilities/buffs
-Affliction speed is either too fast or not fast enough to outpace curing for certain classes. I would recommend removing purgative cures and having all cures fall into only eat/smoke herb, apply salve, or focus. Then, as each class gets inspected individually, things can be tweaked which would make affliction speed too fast or too slow and put it in the right direction. This would give affliction classes the affliction momentum they really need right now.
-Allow herb/salve/focus cures to be cured in a certain order, not in random order. As of right now, if you were afflicted with anorexia and impatience, and used smoke coltsfoot to cure, you aren't 100% sure what will be cured first, due to the fact that the curing order is randomized. I would suggest making afflictions cured in a certain order for herbs, salves and focus. This would then create strategy for affliction classes and affliction tracking will now be viable.
-Remove healing scroll. It's simply too much. Sipping health/mana/bromides and eating sparkleberry should be the only two methods of healing your statistics. Healing scroll can be changed to do something else but as far as it goes right now it truly creates a rift between the lowbies and the top tier, especially those who exceed incredible amounts of health.
-With healing scroll, remove/change beast heal health/mana/ego. Simply too much.
-Remove scrub cures. Put ectoplasm as a calamus cure. Remove sap, rework druids to be able to function without sap. Other scrub afflictions like the illuminati entity and Geomancer mud can be changed to herb/salve cures as well. The only thing scrub would cure is slickness (for slitlocks)
-Regeneration abilities are rampant in Lusternia. Most of them should be removed. The fact that it's easy to receive level 3 health/mana/ego regeneration without artifacts is ridiculous. The racial regenerations for standing in taint for viscanti, standing in water for merian, standing in fire for dracnari, etc., should be removed.
-Monks really need to be reworked, and I feel they should function like warriors. Their afflictions should work just like warrior afflictions do in the sense that in order to windpipe or slit throat a target the opponents head must have a set wound requirement. Momentum is just too powerful and it has been since the beginning. Momentum is incredibly flawed, having no middle ground. It's too weak, or it's too powerful. There is no balance.
-Melds need a review as well. Even with all the nerfs they have received, they are still powerful, nearly impenetrable fortresses if done correctly. Movement abilities for melds need a re-looking, whirlpool/current, rubble, windwalls, etc. Melds should be powerful in nature but the fact that they can hinder a group walking through it so well makes them favor the melding side far too much. Again, no middle ground. There is starting to be a resemblance here.
There are way more issues at hand too which I can list but just haven't thought of it yet from the top of my head but this is what I've been able to put together so far. These are just my humble opinions. I feel as though Lusternia's combat situation can be fixed if the administration is willing to work with Lusternia's combatants on all these issues. I say all this with all due respect, and I truly respect the administration's wishes in fixing the world we have grown to know and love. Thank you.