Negativity was already brought here. Side note, how would you know that these new players are being told to avoid it and not making that decision on their own? Are you one of the many people that made a character, poked around and left? Magnagora has a single new person that is interested in combat and we're doing what we can to help them. We don't stifle them or tell them don't bother. We answer their questions and give them absolutely massive support in guides, training, equipment, hell even artifacts to help them. So I'm really curious where this idea that "Magnagora is just telling their new people to not bother." comes from.
Negativity was already brought here. Side note, how would you know that these new players are being told to avoid it and not making that decision on their own? Are you one of the many people that made a character, poked around and left? Magnagora has a single new person that is interested in combat and we're doing what we can to help them. We don't stifle them or tell them don't bother. We answer their questions and give them absolutely massive support in guides, training, equipment, hell even artifacts to help them. So I'm really curious where this idea that "Magnagora is just telling their new people to not bother." comes from.
07:59:13 The bright, bell-like voice of Retiredmag rings in your ear, "Yeah,
but I am surprised you would want to fight them."
07:59:20 The bright, bell-like voice of Retiredmag rings in your ear, "I guess
you aren't crushed by hopelessness like everyone else yet."
11/06/2018 I was super tilted earlier when everyone was like 'why do we bother, this isn't worth it, why feed them, omg they just get deichtine' and i'm like 'you guys have to focus'. i'm not talking about the etherseren fight
So yea you had people giving people poop for trying.
I wasn't that good at pvp so this might not be a very informed suggestion, but what if we gave people the option to not be targetted by people more than 200% their might? (They can have the option to make themselves targettable if they wish). This way newbies can start by fighting people their own size instead of getting teamed by really strong people on their first attempt and giving up (totally not speaking from experience here, haha ha...)
You are startled as a lemon meringue pie bounces harmlessly off you after being thrown at you by Mysrai.
Negativity was already brought here. Side note, how would you know that these new players are being told to avoid it and not making that decision on their own? Are you one of the many people that made a character, poked around and left? Magnagora has a single new person that is interested in combat and we're doing what we can to help them. We don't stifle them or tell them don't bother. We answer their questions and give them absolutely massive support in guides, training, equipment, hell even artifacts to help them. So I'm really curious where this idea that "Magnagora is just telling their new people to not bother." comes from.
07:59:13 The bright, bell-like voice of Retiredmag rings in your ear, "Yeah,
but I am surprised you would want to fight them."
07:59:20 The bright, bell-like voice of Retiredmag rings in your ear, "I guess
you aren't crushed by hopelessness like everyone else yet."
11/06/2018 I was super tilted earlier when everyone was like 'why do we bother, this isn't worth it, why feed them, omg they just get deichtine' and i'm like 'you guys have to focus'. i'm not talking about the etherseren fight
So yea you had people giving people poop for trying.
It's not really a secret that particulars have always naysay'd, but the majority of people that reside in Mag now, from everything I can see, do whatever they can to help any new people that they have. That would probably include PVP in different circumstances, but... those circumstances don't presently exist.
We have 2 alliances. One alliance has an abundance of people interested in combat, at least a steady population, and a fair amount of veteran/competent combatants. The other alliance doesn't have as many interested new people (at least where combat is concerned) and had more people a few months ago. We still have some competent combatants but a lot of our veteran players aren't as active anymore or have left.
Still not sure how to deal with that aside nix orgs and go fresh start, or limit the number of orgs we have available to play in, or make more events/global events a set number of participants so that it's at least competitive.
So one person from four months ago is the representation of Magnagora? And even looking at the quotes you gave, they're not giving them flak for trying. You can actually -see- them not trying to persuade them away from it. Rather than saying, "There's no point." or anything in that regards, they just stated their surprise. Point of the matter is, please don't say you know how things go down in our orgs and the communications we have. It's like me saying I know what goes on in Glom and Shadow Kindred because I made a person four months ago.
I wasn't that good at pvp so this might not be a very informed suggestion, but what if we gave people the option to not be targetted by people more than 200% their might? (They can have the option to make themselves targettable if they wish). This way newbies can start by fighting people their own size instead of getting teamed by really strong people on their first attempt and giving up (totally not speaking from experience here, haha ha...)
Not a bad option, but something else that just leaves a poor taste in people's mouth is that when they are still fresh and not fully up to snuff, they're the FIRST target. Real motivating!
So one person from four months ago is the representation of Magnagora? And even looking at the quotes you gave, they're not giving them flak for trying. You can actually -see- them not trying to persuade them away from it. Rather than saying, "There's no point." or anything in that regards, they just stated their surprise. Point of the matter is, please don't say you know how things go down in our orgs and the communications we have. It's like me saying I know what goes on in Glom and Shadow Kindred because I made a person four months ago.
To be fair, the non-secret person in question was pretty discouraging in clan an abundance of times. However, no, they should not be considered the singular representative of Magnagoran combat -- there were others who did fight, often, and didn't care that said person was a naysayer.
The actual numbers of people in the game seem semi balanced to be fair. It fluxes a bit but like yesterday before I went to bed it was
53% gaudi/glom/celest and 47% mag/seren/halli.
Thats just players online though including everyone like even level 1 newbies just through the gate.
Oh please. I left Glom primarily because I recognized that this issue was happening- getting frustrated at joining you guys in village revolts and having the "other side" literally give up because they knew there was no point. Over and over again. And while there are plenty of non-Lusternia reasons why I don't come back and play more, knowing that this imbalance still exists and that yall will continue to pretend it doesn't... yeeah, what fun.
But that's all I have to say on that.
"Chairwoman," Princess Setisoki states, holding up a hand in a gesture for her to stop and returning the cup. "That would be quite inappropriate. One of the males will serve me."
Initially, no. When a village revolt, aetherflare, what have you goes into contention, both sides will make a showing. It's the immediate disparity in numbers that make it not worth bothering. Case in point, my least favorite tactic I see happening is where they have -so- many people, they can actually afford to split their forces into separate groups and -still- outnumber. Then when they have a 'solid' footing in one village, they actually just leave it alone and go support their second group, only to hand it off to someone in the alliance.
There is nothing fun about the conflict. Something I know they can't deny, is when Delport/Stewartsville happened recently, I was the only Magnagoran for Stewartsville, and I put up a decent fight because it was peaced. I constantly had two to three people chasing me around to debate, it's not fun. I finally got tired of it and decided I have better things to do than make a village revolt last for three hours, so I left and just told them the rotation that would happen. What do they do with this? THEY LEAVE STEWARTSVILLE to go help in Delport, whole force. This kind of crap happens everytime, that there just is no point what-so-ever in bothering. Do we advertise this to new players? Absolutely not, but if they ask questions we give them answers.
I wasn't that good at pvp so this might not be a very informed suggestion, but what if we gave people the option to not be targetted by people more than 200% their might? (They can have the option to make themselves targettable if they wish). This way newbies can start by fighting people their own size instead of getting teamed by really strong people on their first attempt and giving up (totally not speaking from experience here, haha ha...)
While this is well-intended idea, I don't think it's applicable. As someone with just very little lesson investment (Which is the only thing that effects might comparion in character screens, so all the combat related artifacts, wonderitems, curios don't factor in) can actually be very deadly with just transcending their primary class skillset. (Especially if they are bard, then the investment requirements go way below). And people would probably abuse that to be able to PK others, while the people who have all the dormant skillsets would just get punished by this. (Because they also count towards a character's might.)
---
Now back to the on-going discussion, speaking from my memory, numbers weren't always like this. Neither was the one-sided nature of events I read most people are complaining about. But the on-going imbalance between skillsets, the balancing process including non-constructive and de-railing arguments on important topics of concern and on top of it all, some management fiascos (Sorry not sorry, guys.) did lead most PvP players from specific organizations to gradually lose interest and eventually retire or not even bother to retire. Trust me I know someone who is at that last point.
Honestly I was hoping how numbers changed over late 2016, 2017 and 2018 alone, would be a fine indicator of the conflict imbalance on its own. After all, even Estarra showed up on the forums with a topic they named "Lusternia Activity Levels". I know they intend well, it's their game to begin with. But it's also a bit hard to overlook how little effort it'd take for anyone to reach raw data, about people expressing their discontent over imbalance, decisions in the major events, et cetera on these very forums.
Not "everything" that happened, happened for the worse in that timespan. So yeah, I'm personally a big fan of that Serverside Curing upgrade, let me thank Ianir for that. I think it enables not only novices but also people playing from all around the world that'd struggle with connection to have a better playing field. I also think more daily credits availability while this doesn't equate to f2p, despite advertised by some people? is another great change for the game's population. However, while all these attract people, I don't really see how you're going to keep them in the game with the current design of org-specific skillsets, wonderitems, current in-game atmosphere. I see the effort in balancing the wonderstuff, which is nice. If it were up to me, I'd honestly get rid of most of them, but that's just me being radical about game-breaking artifacts. Yes, they are that. That's just what they do. But the balance even without them is not optimal to be really really polite.
Just two really quick questions on top of my head? Sure.
Why does tiphat even exist, in the game? Ignore the fact that we had to deal with it by-passing monoliths and p5 as was the case when it was first introduced. What does it contribute to, in the game? Don't people have more than enough get-out-of-jail cards at their decks already?
Why do monks exist in their current status? A class that has the most continuous affliction output per balance in the game, a class that deals moderate to overwhelming vital or multi-vital pressure simultaneously depending on which org they're from. Hello bleeding, you're not missed at all, and a class that also has access to the best defensive and utility skillsets in the game. Acrobatics, Stealth. Like, seriously. Why? Has it never been voiced before? No, it has been. Has there been no resources to allocate to fixing them? Eh, maybe. But did everyone stand together and acknowledge what shouldn't be possible as priority concerns? Did everyone nerf their own imbalanced skillsets? Some people did, some didn't. So this is what the player-base did, however indirectly. People trying to voice and change the imbalance eventually gave up and moved to greener pastures, while living a stress-free life away from the envoy-business, petty forum arguments that resort to same maneuvers every single time which isn't even a surprise anymore.
It's not worth anyone's time and mental health to deal with that pressure over these. Especially not in a game, in which your primary objective should be having fun by default.
"Oh the year was 453CE, how I wish I was in Serenwilde now... aletter of marque come from the regent to the scummiest aethership I ever seen, gods damn them all...I was told we'd cruise the void for auronidion and dust, we'd fire no turrets, shed no tears.. now I'm a broken man on a Hallifax tier, the last of Saz's privateers."
I'm sorry for wall of text guys, and sorry for the double post. Here's a link to Gomenasai from T.a.T.u.
"Oh the year was 453CE, how I wish I was in Serenwilde now... aletter of marque come from the regent to the scummiest aethership I ever seen, gods damn them all...I was told we'd cruise the void for auronidion and dust, we'd fire no turrets, shed no tears.. now I'm a broken man on a Hallifax tier, the last of Saz's privateers."
That's a very good point (I have transcendant cooking with low class skills). I still wish there would be something to separate newbies from veterans so people can start out with someone their own size, though.
You are startled as a lemon meringue pie bounces harmlessly off you after being thrown at you by Mysrai.
It's not really a secret that particulars have always naysay'd, but the majority of people that reside in Mag now, from everything I can see, do whatever they can to help any new people that they have. That would probably include PVP in different circumstances, but... those circumstances don't presently exist.
We have 2 alliances. One alliance has an abundance of people interested in combat, at least a steady population, and a fair amount of veteran/competent combatants. The other alliance doesn't have as many interested new people (at least where combat is concerned) and had more people a few months ago. We still have some competent combatants but a lot of our veteran players aren't as active anymore or have left.
Still not sure how to deal with that aside nix orgs and go fresh start, or limit the number of orgs we have available to play in, or make more events/global events a set number of participants so that it's at least competitive.
That is really good to hear. Having more people being helpful and encouraging after getting rid of a few of the naysayers will really help any org grow for sure. Its nice that you can report this is happening and I look forwards to seeing it in practice.
That's a 8/1 split between the two main alliances! Lets look at domoths. Again, it's currently an 8/1 split. You have to see that something here is very wrong.
Celest is a virtually dead org. Serenwilde seems to have mostly given up on fighting and apparently consist of rpers and shopkeepers who sometimes do influencing to get daily credits. They're literally playing their own self-contained game away from everyone else. Magnagora is pretty game, obviously trying but just as obviously, being kicked in the teeth a lot. Nothing about any of this makes for a healthy game.
That's a 8/1 split between the two main alliances! Lets look at domoths. Again, it's currently an 8/1 split. You have to see that something here is very wrong.
Celest is a virtually dead org. Serenwilde seems to have mostly given up on fighting and apparently consist of rpers and shopkeepers who sometimes do influencing to get daily credits. They're literally playing their own self-contained game away from everyone else. Magnagora is pretty game, obviously trying but just as obviously, being kicked in the teeth a lot. Nothing about any of this makes for a healthy game.
Also, Magnagora wouldn't have Justice had it not been well let's say unique. It was going to Gaudi/Glom the first round. It could very easily be 9/0. Also, Eadei got lucky with a domoths that was uncontested as stated.
Celest is weird in they have some good combatants when around, but they don't interact as much outside of combat it seems.
Well, it came down to Tarken and Steingrim in the first event, so the RNG did certainly play out differently the second time. I am not for sure if Ixion was in the first event.
Kistan, your comment confuses me as it doesn't address any part of the conversation, much less who you're talking about. Innon is stating that Justice would've gone elsewhere if Steingrim wasn't found in violation of the rules and it get rescheduled. Or are we talking about Eadei finding a domoth ready to be claimed and not immediately jumped upon by the group that watches it around the clock? I can literally stay logged in and within a minute or any Domoth leaving dormancy, it's already being contested. So yea, I guess Eadei was lucky, good thing he practiced??
There were a couple that Magnagora was forced out of but others were there for the taking. But there did seem to be an all round lack of prep this year
Chaos was a mess, but it ends up being one every year. The only reason that thing ever left Tarken's hands was because half way through we got a M Night Shyamalan twist that made it disapoof and have to get picked up again. Knowledge is one of the few I consider individual talent, same for Beauty and Justice. Nature can definitely be teamed, and honestly should, so I wasn't holding my breath on anybody from us taking it. Simply put, if it wasn't an individual competition, Seren/Mag/Halli were so easily repulsed that the effort wasn't even worth it.
Let me share something.Just a time stamp and a couple messages.
RheaLast Monday at 11:42 AM
Yes, I am still confused about it, but the bug report I submitted has been catagorized so they might fix it soon.
So I am more confused about the reason they are still like that then by the affs themselves. (This is referring to Nihilist afflictions.) AvurekhosLast Monday at 12:08 PM
Me and Avu, the WARLORD of my city, and ideally one of the people who should should be a tone setter for the faction, sat down and talked Nihilist mechanics for literally an hour(30 minutes in game, 10 minutes on another server and 30 minutes on discord).
Discussing triggers, alias' I'd want to set up for the class, and so on...
You wanna know what was never said by Avu that entire time.
I never heard " It's pointless to fight Glom."
Avu, Shango, Vatul, Kailanna, Lavinya, etc, the names go on and on that are within without retiring Mag and have never implied it was pointless to fight ICly or OOCly.
They have expressed frustration, and empathy with how it feels to not even be tri-trans or demi, or to not even have vitals runes($350 investments I don't have money for) and be called as the main target to the point where I have died 7 times in one engagement at one point and it was frustrating as hell. Because when I already felt I couldn't do anything. Being toaded, or being cut down without much ability to react is not a great feeling.
It's only in a venting discord full of retiree's(A group of Mag people literally call it the Retirement Club) that you see most of the pointlessness talk. And true newbies are often stopped from joining it -- Mag has also started a proper server now that requires being an active player in Mag or exceptional service in the past and a non-negative outlook.
So, I have a question for you, having read all this... Are you being for real Diechtine?
Do you actually believe the words coming out of your mouth?
Are you trying to dictate what is Mag culture, ICly or OOCly?
Are you trying to say that if we just had a little more pluck and spunk, we'd be off to the races? Because that's a very demeaning position to take when one is on the top of a conflict.
It's akin to saying, "Well try harder next time then." Trust me, we're giving it all we've got, and it's gotten to a breaking point of pointlessness to contest certain events if there's a crowd of you online.
And Kistan, you don't need practice to get a Domoth uncontested.
EDIT I LOVE WHEN THE EDITOR EATS ALL MY LINE ENDINGS
What can I say Neela you are saying that people have been negative to the point that you had to make a new discord for it. That sounds like a great move in the right direction though and again I really hope your efforts at cutting out the negativity work for you.
What? I made the new Mag discord because I wanted a place for active players to be able to get together. We didn't cut them out or intentionally not invite them because they're so negative, it's because I want to keep the server about Lusternia and Magnagora, not how great whatever other game they moved to is. Neela's entire post was about how much support she's gotten in learning PvP and the time investment.
What can I say Neela you are saying that people have been negative to the point that you had to make a new discord for it. That sounds like a great move in the right direction though and again I really hope your efforts at cutting out the negativity work for you.
The new discord is being made to get away from the cruft of the old unofficial discord and the members on it that are, frankly finicky and no long play the game.
This new discord is not being made to avoid negativity, except in the case that you no longer play the game and have retired(In which case in my opinion you shouldn't complain, because you've already given up on the game. ) because it does not do to dwell.
Did you even read anything I wrote? Or just seize upon that one singular moment of you perceiving yourself as correct as proof that you were "Right?"
Maybe just look at more events with fixed numbers if theres a big issue with numbers imbalance.
Like more wargame tournament type things.
This is a cool idea. As someone who's trying to learn pvp and is intimidated by all the artied-out big fish and all you need to learn to be effective for your group, I think more competitive events that allow for 1v1 and/or lower stakes practice that still serves your commune instead of distracting your mentors away from their important duties elsewhere would be A+.
In the past this kind of thing has been brought up, but never really has taken off. In the end the suggestions end up making combat harder to get into for people, need to end up having different groups / command channels, ignore some calls and prioritize others, etc.
This plus @Deichtine's point that a malus/def wouldn't necessarily change group dynamics are great insights from folks who have seen a lot of similar suggestions come and go. Have people played other games/MUDs where the mechanics of group combat were handled elegantly?
Maybe just look at more events with fixed numbers if theres a big issue with numbers imbalance.
Like more wargame tournament type things.
This is a cool idea. As someone who's trying to learn pvp and is intimidated by all the artied-out big fish and all you need to learn to be effective for your group, I think more competitive events that allow for 1v1 and/or lower stakes practice that still serves your commune instead of distracting your mentors away from their important duties elsewhere would be A+.
In the past this kind of thing has been brought up, but never really has taken off. In the end the suggestions end up making combat harder to get into for people, need to end up having different groups / command channels, ignore some calls and prioritize others, etc.
This plus @Deichtine's point that a malus/def wouldn't necessarily change group dynamics are great insights from folks who have seen a lot of similar suggestions come and go. Have people played other games/MUDs where the mechanics of group combat were handled elegantly?
There are supposed to be smaller events, that attract solo play or contesting, in the game right now, these are events that are emergent.
The problem is that the use of these events, whether it's defiling, raiding commune ethereal and cosmic spheres, don't have the appeal because they contribute very little overall. And just serve as a distraction to higher level players. More than that, players who do attempt to use these conflict drivers, tend to get called trolls, or actively targettedEDIT to clarify, or actively targetted by an entire alliance of up too 13-15 combatants and people rather than by the 2 or 3 that might actually be supposed to care from the faction they are targetting to raid. And the reward for doing them is utterly pointless in the grand scheme.
Something that might work beyond fixing what we have already, as well, is a maintenance type thing for villages and aetherbubbles. Where you as a faction have to use them to keep ownership of them. And disruption of these events could be a fun conflict driver.
Something like an every 2 week revolt guaranteed for villages, on a timer so that one occurs around every 5 days, but possible(But not guarantee'd) partial revolts if maintenance via comm quests and village quests or other methods are disrupted(Whether by killing players trying to do the comm quests or killing NPC's) for a fair amount of time. Say 2 in game days. You'd then have players with impetus to defend their space, and players with impetus to attack their space. Rather than the relatively static cold war, till it suddenly goes hot for a brief 1-3 hour period on the weekends.
As currently one of my biggest problem is that the whole game feels plastic and a bit black boxed because of the artificiality of the events that occur.
There's no dynamism in the system, and what little there was, has been eaten out and removed by players being dickbags with said dynamism.
Maybe just look at more events with fixed numbers if theres a big issue with numbers imbalance.
Like more wargame tournament type things.
This is a cool idea. As someone who's trying to learn pvp and is intimidated by all the artied-out big fish and all you need to learn to be effective for your group, I think more competitive events that allow for 1v1 and/or lower stakes practice that still serves your commune instead of distracting your mentors away from their important duties elsewhere would be A+.
In the past this kind of thing has been brought up, but never really has taken off. In the end the suggestions end up making combat harder to get into for people, need to end up having different groups / command channels, ignore some calls and prioritize others, etc.
This plus @Deichtine's point that a malus/def wouldn't necessarily change group dynamics are great insights from folks who have seen a lot of similar suggestions come and go. Have people played other games/MUDs where the mechanics of group combat were handled elegantly?
I agree we should bring the conversation back to the topic; however, neither of these two comments actually help things. The first comment basically says "Suck it up, and go to tournaments that doesn't have an impact in the game. ", and the second comment is in my opinion a cop out to any real suggestion. It would make targeting more complex, but everyone should get a chat window if they don't have one and/or call out alias for clans. These are common on both sides. Therefore, there is very little added complexity unless you take the fact that having the current losing side actually have a chance due to numbers then in that case it would be more complex than just standing around. These two comments are literally the comments that derailed the thread.
However, any suggestions on a solution to the current problem or any enhancements or flaws identified within the proposal would be appreciated. Also, anyone is welcome to come up with their own idea. I actually really liked the shield idea.
For anyone that doesn't have a chat window, Reysgui is a great starting point, and I will gladly create anyone a call out if needed.
Yes, I've been playing IRE games for well over twenty years, and Lusternia had a time period where skill actually mattered in combat, when a specialization had multiple viable kill methods. There's not going to be any fixing of group combat unless specializations and classes are given a fair shake to thrive again. Artifacts are not required to be helpful in combat, though they can help. We have something that is competitive for 1v1s, practice, etc. It's called the Arena and Combat Rankings system that has gone so under utilized, I actually forgot it existed until I read the comment. There is no way to directly 'nerf' group combat to make it seem more fair to the smaller battle force ... nor should we. The whole point of conquest and dominion is to flat out assert dominance. Instead, I'd rather see more skill be returned to combat, instead of just the dull 'rotation' we have.
Take a look at your own class in reflection, what kill methods are offered in your skills? You should see one in your Primary and one in Tertiary of choice. Sometimes you'll find one in your Secondary, but most of the times that is your utility skillset. This is how it should be, but instead if you ask for combat advice, and this happens more frequently than not, you get told one thing to do and that is your assigned job. Sometimes you'll find someone actually knowledgeable about each specialization and class you have access to, but more likely than not, they really don't and just want you to use one or two abilities ever. I honestly miss the days where your understanding and execution of your skills made you exceptional and worth fearing. But then group combat got larger and larger, and more things were made to make skill mean less and less. No amount of skill, artifacts, anything is going to keep you standing and fighting when you are the target of multiple people working as an assembly line. When Mooks 1, 2, and 3 are told to siphon mana and Killer 1 is told to insta kill ... you begin to see what I'm talking about.
Group combat was an organized business, people actually trained, planned, and worked together to make combinations that were so good, they got nerfed. As time went on, more and more nerfs kept hitting, and now we're at where we are. Point of all this, unless we make these classes and specializations fleshed out and attractive to play again, we're going to be on repeat. Eventually people are going to get bored of winning or lack of competition and they'll hop borders or try to mix up alliances to give the facade of balance. I like the idea and the passion to want to make group combat better, but it will yield no fruit because there just isn't a good way to balance it. Heck, I've already stated that four people working in tandem can drop a person in a blink, and that's a true scenario. Ramble made short, make the classes and specializations viable again, then let's revisit group combat.
Comments
07:59:20 The bright, bell-like voice of Retiredmag rings in your ear, "I guess you aren't crushed by hopelessness like everyone else yet."
11/06/2018 I was super tilted earlier when everyone was like 'why do we bother, this isn't worth it, why feed them, omg they just get deichtine' and i'm like 'you guys have to focus'. i'm not talking about the etherseren fight
So yea you had people giving people poop for trying.
We have 2 alliances. One alliance has an abundance of people interested in combat, at least a steady population, and a fair amount of veteran/competent combatants. The other alliance doesn't have as many interested new people (at least where combat is concerned) and had more people a few months ago. We still have some competent combatants but a lot of our veteran players aren't as active anymore or have left.
Still not sure how to deal with that aside nix orgs and go fresh start, or limit the number of orgs we have available to play in, or make more events/global events a set number of participants so that it's at least competitive.
But that's all I have to say on that.
---
Now back to the on-going discussion, speaking from my memory, numbers weren't always like this. Neither was the one-sided nature of events I read most people are complaining about. But the on-going imbalance between skillsets, the balancing process including non-constructive and de-railing arguments on important topics of concern and on top of it all, some management fiascos (Sorry not sorry, guys.) did lead most PvP players from specific organizations to gradually lose interest and eventually retire or not even bother to retire. Trust me I know someone who is at that last point.
Honestly I was hoping how numbers changed over late 2016, 2017 and 2018 alone, would be a fine indicator of the conflict imbalance on its own. After all, even Estarra showed up on the forums with a topic they named "Lusternia Activity Levels". I know they intend well, it's their game to begin with. But it's also a bit hard to overlook how little effort it'd take for anyone to reach raw data, about people expressing their discontent over imbalance, decisions in the major events, et cetera on these very forums.
Not "everything" that happened, happened for the worse in that timespan. So yeah, I'm personally a big fan of that Serverside Curing upgrade, let me thank Ianir for that. I think it enables not only novices but also people playing from all around the world that'd struggle with connection to have a better playing field. I also think more daily credits availability while this doesn't equate to f2p, despite advertised by some people? is another great change for the game's population. However, while all these attract people, I don't really see how you're going to keep them in the game with the current design of org-specific skillsets, wonderitems, current in-game atmosphere. I see the effort in balancing the wonderstuff, which is nice. If it were up to me, I'd honestly get rid of most of them, but that's just me being radical about game-breaking artifacts. Yes, they are that. That's just what they do. But the balance even without them is not optimal to be really really polite.
Just two really quick questions on top of my head? Sure.
Why does tiphat even exist, in the game? Ignore the fact that we had to deal with it by-passing monoliths and p5 as was the case when it was first introduced. What does it contribute to, in the game? Don't people have more than enough get-out-of-jail cards at their decks already?
Why do monks exist in their current status? A class that has the most continuous affliction output per balance in the game, a class that deals moderate to overwhelming vital or multi-vital pressure simultaneously depending on which org they're from. Hello bleeding, you're not missed at all, and a class that also has access to the best defensive and utility skillsets in the game. Acrobatics, Stealth. Like, seriously. Why? Has it never been voiced before? No, it has been. Has there been no resources to allocate to fixing them? Eh, maybe. But did everyone stand together and acknowledge what shouldn't be possible as priority concerns? Did everyone nerf their own imbalanced skillsets? Some people did, some didn't. So this is what the player-base did, however indirectly. People trying to voice and change the imbalance eventually gave up and moved to greener pastures, while living a stress-free life away from the envoy-business, petty forum arguments that resort to same maneuvers every single time which isn't even a surprise anymore.
It's not worth anyone's time and mental health to deal with that pressure over these. Especially not in a game, in which your primary objective should be having fun by default.
-Kilian
-Kilian
Glomdoring: 4
Gaudiguch: 3
Celest: 1
Magnagora: 1
Serenwilde: 0
Hallifax: 0
That's a 8/1 split between the two main alliances! Lets look at domoths. Again, it's currently an 8/1 split. You have to see that something here is very wrong.
Celest is a virtually dead org. Serenwilde seems to have mostly given up on fighting and apparently consist of rpers and shopkeepers who sometimes do influencing to get daily credits. They're literally playing their own self-contained game away from everyone else. Magnagora is pretty game, obviously trying but just as obviously, being kicked in the teeth a lot. Nothing about any of this makes for a healthy game.
Celest is weird in they have some good combatants when around, but they don't interact as much outside of combat it seems.
RheaLast Monday at 11:42 AM Yes, I am still confused about it, but the bug report I submitted has been catagorized so they might fix it soon.
So I am more confused about the reason they are still like that then by the affs themselves.
(This is referring to Nihilist afflictions.)
AvurekhosLast Monday at 12:08 PM
Me and Avu, the WARLORD of my city, and ideally one of the people who should should be a tone setter for the faction, sat down and talked Nihilist mechanics for literally an hour(30 minutes in game, 10 minutes on another server and 30 minutes on discord).
Discussing triggers, alias' I'd want to set up for the class, and so on...
You wanna know what was never said by Avu that entire time.
I never heard " It's pointless to fight Glom."
Avu, Shango, Vatul, Kailanna, Lavinya, etc, the names go on and on that are within without retiring Mag and have never implied it was pointless to fight ICly or OOCly.
They have expressed frustration, and empathy with how it feels to not even be tri-trans or demi, or to not even have vitals runes($350 investments I don't have money for) and be called as the main target to the point where I have died 7 times in one engagement at one point and it was frustrating as hell. Because when I already felt I couldn't do anything. Being toaded, or being cut down without much ability to react is not a great feeling.
It's only in a venting discord full of retiree's(A group of Mag people literally call it the Retirement Club) that you see most of the pointlessness talk. And true newbies are often stopped from joining it -- Mag has also started a proper server now that requires being an active player in Mag or exceptional service in the past and a non-negative outlook.
So, I have a question for you, having read all this... Are you being for real Diechtine?
Do you actually believe the words coming out of your mouth? Are you trying to dictate what is Mag culture, ICly or OOCly?
Are you trying to say that if we just had a little more pluck and spunk, we'd be off to the races? Because that's a very demeaning position to take when one is on the top of a conflict. It's akin to saying, "Well try harder next time then." Trust me, we're giving it all we've got, and it's gotten to a breaking point of pointlessness to contest certain events if there's a crowd of you online.
And Kistan, you don't need practice to get a Domoth uncontested.
EDIT I LOVE WHEN THE EDITOR EATS ALL MY LINE ENDINGS
EDIT2 FIXED
This new discord is not being made to avoid negativity, except in the case that you no longer play the game and have retired(In which case in my opinion you shouldn't complain, because you've already given up on the game. ) because it does not do to dwell.
Did you even read anything I wrote? Or just seize upon that one singular moment of you perceiving yourself as correct as proof that you were "Right?"
This is a cool idea. As someone who's trying to learn pvp and is intimidated by all the artied-out big fish and all you need to learn to be effective for your group, I think more competitive events that allow for 1v1 and/or lower stakes practice that still serves your commune instead of distracting your mentors away from their important duties elsewhere would be A+.
This plus @Deichtine's point that a malus/def wouldn't necessarily change group dynamics are great insights from folks who have seen a lot of similar suggestions come and go. Have people played other games/MUDs where the mechanics of group combat were handled elegantly?
The problem is that the use of these events, whether it's defiling, raiding commune ethereal and cosmic spheres, don't have the appeal because they contribute very little overall. And just serve as a distraction to higher level players. More than that, players who do attempt to use these conflict drivers, tend to get called trolls, or actively targettedEDIT to clarify, or actively targetted by an entire alliance of up too 13-15 combatants and people rather than by the 2 or 3 that might actually be supposed to care from the faction they are targetting to raid. And the reward for doing them is utterly pointless in the grand scheme.
Something that might work beyond fixing what we have already, as well, is a maintenance type thing for villages and aetherbubbles. Where you as a faction have to use them to keep ownership of them. And disruption of these events could be a fun conflict driver.
Something like an every 2 week revolt guaranteed for villages, on a timer so that one occurs around every 5 days, but possible(But not guarantee'd) partial revolts if maintenance via comm quests and village quests or other methods are disrupted(Whether by killing players trying to do the comm quests or killing NPC's) for a fair amount of time. Say 2 in game days. You'd then have players with impetus to defend their space, and players with impetus to attack their space. Rather than the relatively static cold war, till it suddenly goes hot for a brief 1-3 hour period on the weekends.
As currently one of my biggest problem is that the whole game feels plastic and a bit black boxed because of the artificiality of the events that occur.
There's no dynamism in the system, and what little there was, has been eaten out and removed by players being dickbags with said dynamism.
However, any suggestions on a solution to the current problem or any enhancements or flaws identified within the proposal would be appreciated. Also, anyone is welcome to come up with their own idea. I actually really liked the shield idea.
For anyone that doesn't have a chat window, Reysgui is a great starting point, and I will gladly create anyone a call out if needed.