I think you're trying to be upbeat and I appreciate that, but 'fingers crossed things get better on their own now players have left' .....we don't want players to leave? Aren't we looking for ways to improve other than hoping for the best? Or waiting for players to leave then hopefully it will be ok?
I think you're trying to be upbeat and I appreciate that, but 'fingers crossed things get better on their own now players have left' .....we don't want players to leave? Aren't we looking for ways to improve other than hoping for the best? Or waiting for players to leave then hopefully it will be ok?
More a case of we are getting lots of new newbies in and now the negative people are gone hopefully we can retain them.
'A few of the most invested people in the game have left, people who I deem were toxic. Clearly, now that a year has past, the game will recover'.
The game is clearly recovering now that those people have left. The evidence is clear. Look at all these forum threads regarding player retention. Clearly, the toxic people have left and no toxicity remains.
I have to ask. Do you honestly think that you are a person that people delight upon interacting with? Do you honestly think you converse, or communicate in a way that is slightly conducive to progressive conversation in any context? I think you need to perform some introspection.
Your disingenuous branding of 'toxic' people is, for all irony, quite toxic.
I know, I wish people would be better than they are but yea the worst offenders seem to have left so fingers crossed things improve.
Worst offenders....I'll give you that quite a few had been removed over the years, yes. But that the game has, especially recently, dwindled even further in activity levels, kinda proves that there are a few that remain. No, I shan't name names....and no, personally I do not think you are one of them, though I am entitled to my own opinion.
The level of trolling done, condescension in general, metagaming, lack of balance in skills, that whole Library debacle (which I believe is now being addressed, though we have Ascension on us so I certainly am fine with changes in general being slightly delayed), mindsets of tit for tat when balance comes up as an issue, misinformation, etc...
These are things that are driving people away. Which sadly leads to the other big issue, lack of population in general. Celest, Serenwilde and Hallifax being near to dead almost constantly has only served to drive potential influx away, and lessened choices for new people.
I'm going to ignore the trolling and try and stay positive.
I'm having a great time with the influx of newbies we are getting and I'll do my best to keep them entertained and interactive. I see a future for the game and as long as we keep positive and keep promoting these new players the old toxicity we used to have will eventually fade away to a bad memory.
I'm going to ignore the trolling and try and stay positive.
I'm having a great time with the influx of newbies we are getting and I'll do my best to keep them entertained and interactive. I see a future for the game and as long as we keep positive and keep promoting these new players the old toxicity we used to have will eventually fade away to a bad memory.
Sad to say it, but you'd have to be one of the people leaving too.
I am glad that you are enjoying the game and that great things are happening for your org. Unfortunately, this is not the case for everyone and every org, and I think it is very disingenuous to refuse to understand that. Perhaps the future for the game really is that everyone will be in Glomdoring and it will achieve its in-game goal of being the entirety of the Basin.
Edit: Perhaps it is also wise to remember that a lot of us have close friends who left for combat imbalance reasons, and that referencing the people who left as essentially "toxic players who had it coming" is going to make emotions run high.
(clan): Falmiis says, "Aramelise, verb, 1. adorn with many flowers."
I notice a lot of people use the discord as a bit of a scapegoat. You don't have to be on there, there is no pressure. The admin don't make plans with players on there and implement them and leave everyone else out in the cold. They're just there to observe and interact in an unofficial capacity.
The one or two of you that complain about the discord are pretty much ignorant. Before this, it was Skype groups or AIM.
The admin have nothing to do with discord. IRE have nothing to do with discord. They are entirely separate entities. If you have a complaint about any discord server, take it up with the moderators on there. Or don't. You leaving the discord channel will not impact you playing Lusternia at all. Stop blaming a messaging application.
Nope, when the admin are talking about game mechanics, upcoming changes, player concerns, etc on discord they are collecting information (even subconsciously) that will inform their choices in the future.
Sometimes this is replicated on other mediums but often they aren't, sometimes these discussions only get to the forums because the players present at the time in discord personally bring them across.
This has also happened with the forums as well, it's just that the forums are more accessible thanks to things like threads which help are larger group of people participate than whoever happened to be online then the convo started.
Genuine question here, because something @Shaddus said caught my interest.
Glomdoring has dominated the game for the last ~1.5 years, undeniable fact. You say the organisation won't allow other people to have a turn - how would you propose Glomdoring goes about doing that? Short of simply not playing, I am not actually sure how this would look. Perhaps that is the solution some people would like to see, but I think most people can acknowledge that its both unlikely and unreasonable to expect that of people.
I'm asking this from the perspective of someone who both had a fondness for several of the people that retired and as someone who does not have the time to play very much anymore, but when I do am a fairly significant asset to my organisation in the pk department. I log in to play with friends and to help them succeed, not for any particular desire to shake people down for their lunch money. Perhaps there is context here I'm unaware of due to that reduced presence, but I'd be interested if you can see a reasonable way forward that I have missed.
I notice a lot of people use the discord as a bit of a scapegoat. You don't have to be on there, there is no pressure. The admin don't make plans with players on there and implement them and leave everyone else out in the cold. They're just there to observe and interact in an unofficial capacity.
The one or two of you that complain about the discord are pretty much ignorant. Before this, it was Skype groups or AIM.
The admin have nothing to do with discord. IRE have nothing to do with discord. They are entirely separate entities. If you have a complaint about any discord server, take it up with the moderators on there. Or don't. You leaving the discord channel will not impact you playing Lusternia at all. Stop blaming a messaging application.
Nope, when the admin are talking about game mechanics, upcoming changes, player concerns, etc on discord they are collecting information (even subconsciously) that will inform their choices in the future.
Sometimes this is replicated on other mediums but often they aren't, sometimes these discussions only get to the forums because the players present at the time in discord personally bring them across.
This has also happened with the forums as well, it's just that the forums are more accessible thanks to things like threads which help are larger group of people participate than whoever happened to be online then the convo started.
Okay, so if I message an admin directly and voice my concerns to them about a game mechanic, are you going to be all up in arms because you weren't part of the conversation? That could inform their choices in the future!
The forums, discord, whatever - they're all tools for data collection by admin, you're right. And that's awesome, it gives the admin more avenues to see what the players are thinking about.
And not everyone on the discord is on the forums, and not everyone on the forums is on the discord. So why get rid of a helpful tool like that? There's no need to blame discord.
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
Genuine question here, because something @Shaddus said caught my interest.
Glomdoring has dominated the game for the last ~1.5 years, undeniable fact. You say the organisation won't allow other people to have a turn - how would you propose Glomdoring goes about doing that? Short of simply not playing, I am not actually sure how this would look. Perhaps that is the solution some people would like to see, but I think most people can acknowledge that its both unlikely and unreasonable to expect that of people.
I'm asking this from the perspective of someone who both had a fondness for several of the people that retired and as someone who does not have the time to play very much anymore, but when I do am a fairly significant asset to my organisation in the pk department. I log in to play with friends and to help them succeed, not for any particular desire to shake people down for their lunch money. Perhaps there is context here I'm unaware of due to that reduced presence, but I'd be interested if you can see a reasonable way forward that I have missed.
Less clamoring to nerf everyone else the instant they get something functional....less attempting to block all attempts to improve skills in general...less crying foul when Glom skills are called into question as overtuned....less attempting to subvert honest discourse about unrelated things like artifacts into something else as an undercurrented means to still hold advantage/derail the thread. These would make for a good start. No you haven't engaged in such yourself, Tarken, so I don't point a finger at you in this, merely state what would make for a good start.
Otherwise, dominating because of good group tactics and cohesion, and well designed synergy is fine. It's just that the rest of the efforts to prevent anyone else getting much the same, or immediately trying to argue 'balancing' any fixes or improvements to keep everyone else right about where they currently are (looking at every damned Warrior report ever, there, despite Glom benefiting JUST as much as anyone else, more with Pureblade bleed working quite well with the general mechanics of Glomdoring)...THAT is what is asked of when calls are made to give others a turn.
No one wants a handout where any Org on top quits for a bit...and I've actually seen that in action, one org in another game absolutely dominated all the others, members intentionally went dormant, alted, or jumped ship to help other orgs...every damned thing fell apart for the original org and the game in general for a while. So no, none of that. Just less of the metagaming, false/mistaken statistics, trolling, etc and we'd all be much better off.
Turn your artifacts off. Play a new class. Play a /bad/ class(seriously though report to make shamanism viable with woods when, it's a rad-ass tert). Bring newbies and support their kill routes instead of pursuing your own.
(yeah, tritransing something new costs hella. I know, it sucks, I hate it. Autotritrans at demi when?)
I think you're trying to be upbeat and I appreciate that, but 'fingers crossed things get better on their own now players have left' .....we don't want players to leave? Aren't we looking for ways to improve other than hoping for the best? Or waiting for players to leave then hopefully it will be ok?
More a case of we are getting lots of new newbies in and now the negative people are gone hopefully we can retain them.
This really encapsulates one of the reasons Lusternia is crumbling for me because that "negative" label isn't just applied to abusive types but also to people who just aren't happy with the game.
It reads as "The people that didn't like aspects of the game left so now everything's going to be great", but the reasons those "negative people" left are very likely still present and it's just a matter of time before the newbies encounter them and leave for the same reasons.
Okay, so if I message an admin directly and voice my concerns to them about a game mechanic, are you going to be all up in arms because you weren't part of the conversation? That could inform their choices in the future!
The forums, discord, whatever - they're all tools for data collection by admin, you're right. And that's awesome, it gives the admin more avenues to see what the players are thinking about.
And not everyone on the discord is on the forums, and not everyone on the forums is on the discord. So why get rid of a helpful tool like that? There's no need to blame discord.
Personally messaging the admin is a tool that everyone reasonably has equal access to, it's also pretty unlikely that the admin will send out a group email to a couple of people to see what they think about a game wide issue. In fact, my experience is that the support box is pretty much a black hole that you sometimes get, effectively, a "we've received your message" response from.
The discord, however, is an avenue that is moderated by a group of players which in itself isn't great given the complaints mentioned about people not feeling welcome and the like. Aside from that, in a smaller server that I admin we've become really aware that discord is terrible for actually communicating about important issues when you want feedback from people that might not be online at the time.
For example, I happened to be online when Orael was talking about the melder overhaul so I was able to send through a log of another chat from the Serenade about what would be cool for the Hartstone part of that. If I was not online at that time I wouldn't even be aware that apparently there wasn't really any Hartstone stuff for the overhaul. If this was on the forums then not only would it be unlikely to be missed, even more people could have contributed their ideas.
So yeah, I don't actually think discord is as generally helpful as it might feel to people engaged with it, it just splits off communication to an unofficial channel which is harder for people to follow if they're not online when things actually get discussed but if you want to be sure you know what's going on you've gotta consistently check in on it because there's no guarantee the info will cross over to other mediums.
I'm going to ignore the trolling and try and stay positive.
I'm having a great time with the influx of newbies we are getting and I'll do my best to keep them entertained and interactive. I see a future for the game and as long as we keep positive and keep promoting these new players the old toxicity we used to have will eventually fade away to a bad memory.
The irony burns me.
We've literally had new players who start, do well for a bit, and then leave because the game is imbalanced and they can't understand why the admin let it go on. We've had older players who have stopped playing for the same reasons.
We've had some toxic people leave. We've had some players who weren't toxic but were pretty bitter about the state of the game leave.
Having said all that, I'm all for giving new people reasons to stay, but your reasoning is pretty unsound. Problems don't go away just because you try and ignore them, and people are going to have the same problems in the future that we have had in the past, especially if we don't address said problems .
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
I work with Glomdoring because I like them. They're fair, they don't throw their fighting weight around in the alliance. They offer combat advice when asked.
This, and the fact the alliance with Magnagora we had before was not like that. Gaudi is a small org compared to both Glom and Magnagora and so it is logical for it to chose the one that does not throw its weight around whenever it is time to divide the spoils.
It is no secret that my character hates Magnagora, however it also doesn't like Glomdoring all that much. If a Celest-Serenwilde-Gaudiguch alliance was viable I would have pushed for that ages ago. But its not
I work with Glomdoring because I like them. They're fair, they don't throw their fighting weight around in the alliance. They offer combat advice when asked.
This, and the fact the alliance with Magnagora we had before was not like that. Gaudi is a small org compared to both Glom and Magnagora and so it is logical for it to chose the one that does not throw its weight around whenever it is time to divide the spoils.
It is no secret that my character hates Magnagora, however it also doesn't like Glomdoring all that much. If a Celest-Serenwilde-Gaudiguch alliance was viable I would have pushed for that ages ago. But its not
Magnagora has a small population that still actually cares about combat. And therefore, there are only so many people who can encourage this desire to fight against very heavy odds. We have with Serenwilde and Hallifax tried to encourage them, and they us when it comes to combat as a whole. Magnagora has assisted Hallifax and Serenwilde when their populations were low when claiming things have been difficult. Again, Mag now has only a small population that cares about ALL -conquest- mechanics, that includes pvp events.
The rest will not respond to a lot of initiation on the opposing side, simply because of a sense of hopelessness and other things listed on the forums. You would consider them 'non-coms' and opposing sides will label them whatever they like, because they no longer run to the call of a demon attacked on Nil, or an Aspect struck. It depends on who you ask as to how they feel about this. This conversation as you've seen no doubt are cyclical.
Before when we were allied it was even smaller, Magnagora was even less populated. Our population grew, but that didn't change anything about our combat mechanics, or how people felt. There were a bunch of new people we tried to encourage, but they didn't stay. We can't force them to make a choice to step up for pvp, especially in this climate.
One person disrupted the alliance, and it led to this reputation of Mag not treating their alliances properly. This has been mentioned before.
We have never thrown our weight around for as long as I've been playing to my knowledge. Whatever you call it, there's no big bad wolf energy in Magnagora, and there hasn't been for years IRL.
Our relationship with Glomdoring before that pivotal moment seemed cordial, but there were a lot of OOC factors that broke the RP involvement which seems pretty common nowadays.
The cool night-time breeze shivers in the arid caress of the streets of the capital city, brushing the earthen taste of dust across your lips.
*
A blessed silence falls upon the city for the moment, most activity confined to the towers and the theatre due to the snowy weather.
*
Pinprick points of light twinkle in the deep black overhead, their brightness full of a cold, hungering malice.
Their superior skillsets and group synergy is just one part of why they're unbearable to play with, as an org.
It's that they also deflect and deny this mechanical superiority. Check out the other thread and see this: bleed synergy was the topic, and it was immediately diverted to how other orgs have a similar synergy, too. Dustaffs, lol. It's the same with the IllusorySelf and feathercharm threads: "oh but NOSES, let's talk about that instead". Remember the old "fear is OP, nerf wolf" debacle? This is that, writ large.
And on top of that, they have the gall to say that Glomdoring is amazing because they have such positive attitudes, not because of any mechanical advantage that they have. That the snowball effect is just myth, and that power does not breed power, and being on top makes it exponentially easier to keep being on top. That all other orgs MUST be bad and MUST be toxic to be losing their players in large numbers. "If only you were as positive as we were!". Give me a break.
I'm going to call out Glomdoring as a whole here, without regret. While I will concede that not every Glomdoring player is equally accountable, each one of them enables the worst of their playerbase. By not acknowledging the faults in your own organization and the way some of your members speak with dripping condescension, you are, in fact, part of the problem, and must be held accountable to change, as well.
One of the big reasons I burned out was also that it felt like playing the game wasn't as important as winning the envoy/forums war. And that's hard for me to contribute to, because I am a conflict-averse person and it's mentally exhausting for me to argue with someone, particularly in a situation where there's one of me and five of them, and where they don't seem to be arguing for balance but rather to preserve their own advantages.
I don't think I'm the only person who has experienced this, and I know for a fact that people have given up being envoys before because it is an extraordinary drain to have to argue with the smooth, seamless stone wall that is Glomdoring deflection.
(clan): Falmiis says, "Aramelise, verb, 1. adorn with many flowers."
Magnagora has a small population that still actually cares about combat. And therefore, there are only so many people who can encourage this desire to fight against very heavy odds.
I realize your numbers dwindled. Gaudiguch has been getting more interest from people who want to fight, but at the same time the combat leaders and the experienced combatants have been a lot more sparse due to real life stuff.
I have been trying to get Gaudiguch to go solo, or just with Celest depending on who is around to domoth. I have been having 3 issues with this.
I can not work out a valid kill strategy as illuminati (with tarot) nor as pyromancer (with runes or dreamweaving). Which requires me to bring atleast 1 person that can kill in 1vs1 which often means bring a Gloom.
Tables get turned on us and we get overrun by more and better combatants which results in Glom coming to our aid.
I have been around far less due to volunteering, work and evening classes.
We have with Serenwilde and Hallifax tried to encourage them, and they us when it comes to combat as a whole. Magnagora has assisted Hallifax and Serenwilde when their populations were low when claiming things have been difficult. Again, Mag now has only a small population that cares about ALL -conquest- mechanics, that includes pvp events.
I sympatize, and while I do not agree that this is due to glom players specificly, I do hope things get fixed so all orgs get players again.
Though I also believe part of that fix is to reduce number of orgs and possibly just start over with 2 or 3 new orgs in part to get rid of old issues, in part cause I think we have far to many orgs, classes, sub classes to be able to balance things.
The rest will not respond to a lot of initiation on the opposing side, simply because of a sense of hopelessness and other things listed on the forums. You would consider them 'non-coms' and opposing sides will label them whatever they like, because they no longer run to the call of a demon attacked on Nil, or an Aspect struck. It depends on who you ask as to how they feel about this. This conversation as you've seen no doubt are cyclical.
I know the feeling. I have played in an undersiege celest, an undersiege Serenwilde, an undersiege Hallifax for long periods of time. One thing I like about Gaudiguch is that our stance is vortex entities are not important, go defend if you wish but if they die the party goes on.
Before when we were allied it was even smaller, Magnagora was even less populated. Our population grew, but that didn't change anything about our combat mechanics, or how people felt. There were a bunch of new people we tried to encourage, but they didn't stay. We can't force them to make a choice to step up for pvp, especially in this climate.
Please don't ever force anyone to pvp, even in different climates.
One person disrupted the alliance, and it led to this reputation of Mag not treating their alliances properly. This has been mentioned before.
We have never thrown our weight around for as long as I've been playing to my knowledge. Whatever you call it, there's no big bad wolf energy in Magnagora, and there hasn't been for years IRL.
Our relationship with Glomdoring before that pivotal moment seemed cordial, but there were a lot of OOC factors that broke the RP involvement which seems pretty common nowadays.
One person disrupted your alliance with Glomdoring yes, Magnagora's council and citizens decided to let that person do it though so it does not result to just one person being responsible.
Long before that Magnagora was always we have the most fighters we'll take this village, wildnodes, insert stuff here even though it was prearranged to go to Gaudiguch. Though I rather have those discussions IC as having them here might seem I blame players for that rather than the IC argumentation for chosing an ally that it is.
OOC going IC has been an issue on all sides.
And now I'll break out a pet peeve I have had since the beginning of this topic and it is not directed to the person I have been quoting or anyone in particular.
It seems from this topic people seem to think that bitter is not toxic, and you are free to think so of course.
But bitterness, being consistently negative, exposing new players who should be full of wonder while utterly confused at the same time to that negativity is harmful.
Worse of all if you put multiple bitter/negative people together they will work in on eachother and become even more bitter and/or negative. I say this as a person that is predominantely negative about the state of this game and who has fallen victim to this.
I am very lucky I have people I interact with who point me to positive things, like quests, fun people to interact with but even those people will get worn down in the end if you don't adjust you mindset now and again.
And don't get me wrong, I get the frustrations, I get the feeling of hopelessness and the feeling that other players are out to grief you and whats not. I can only suggest to you when you get that feeling of hopelessness, take a break. And I mean a real break where you stay away from the game, the forums, the discord and don't talk with friends about the game. Play other games, go out and do stuff whatever you enjoy. And when you can truly say wow I want to try out Lusternia cause of the good memories, rather than thinking about the bad, try it out again without looking at the forums, discord or whatever else ooc channels you have.
And once again that is not to say things don't have to change, things do have to change, but you don't cause change by being negative, you repulse people that are motivated to cause change (like new volunteer admins).
edit: sorry the layout got totally ruined cause I fail at these forums
I am going to leave here a post made by @Enya on the other thread, which I think is important to keep in mind before we start telling people who are unhappy with the state of the game that the problem is their attitude.
I'm going to try and summarize my opinion on this, we had a long talk on the discord on the subject and I don't necessarily want to fully rehash without a chance to sit down and plan - but who knows when this will get locked so here we goooooooo.
When I say "Glomdoring" I mean exactly that, the organization as an institution. I do not mean "all of the players in Glom" or "Some notable players who play Glom". Not just to try and skirt forum rules or whatever, really: Glomdoring as a stand in for a culture exemplified there. I will specify when I'm talking about specific people or "those people" in a general sense, as culture is like the wind in that you can only see its effects as expressed by how it moves.
Glom has a culture that promotes certain types of rhetoric from its prominent players, that has spread through the Glom diaspora via players who would still be identified primarily as "Gloms" even after leaving to allied nations. It's one that ultimately is in ascendancy overall in the Real World as well, and has to do (I won't go into too much detail because it's long) with forced optimism and positivity as a moral stance.
Read the forums and you see prominent Gloms using rhetoric espousing this philosophy. In short I will try to sum it up:
-Remain positive -Even if you are presenting critique -Even if you are being attacked, take the high road -Success comes if you are positive, success in gameplay and in balance changes. -If you are failing therefore,it is (at least in part) because you were insufficiently positive
With the exception of the final point, these are all reasonable sounding axioms, and in general can be taken as a good ethos. The problem is that speech is not inherently neutral, it is an ACT embedded in context and inextricable with it. In other words: while possibly correct, bringing up an argument about the tone in which a position is being presented has a purpose, and that purpose in Lusternia is inevitably to pull the conversation away from the meat of the discussion at hand. An argument about pointing out the positivity or lack thereof of an argument is tone policing, a form of ad hominem... but ad hominems aren't bad per se.
Gasp, you read that correctly: Ad hominem's aren't necessarily bad... in fact, I think that they're necessary to some degree for a useful discussion! This is the case will all of the related fallacies, actually. A blind appeal to authority is bad, but at the end of the day it's not reasonable to explain to the degree of educating all participants to the same level, it's okay to have experts weigh in and appeal to their authority. Likewise, it's okay - necessary even - to invoke a genetic fallacy or two! In the thread about artifacts @Shaddusbegan interjecting with what (by their own account) were non-serious statements. From then out, it's probably safe to discount their statements: someone just wanting to stir the pot will say anything. The point of this digression is that you have to look at the impact of speech with an eye towards its utility, not just its form. Back to Glomdoring. Part of what riles people up so much are statements to the effect of: "Your points didn't have impact because they were so negative; don't resort to personal attacks." Which is an ad hominem tone policing argument against said points in practical terms, while at the very same time asserting avoiding ad hominem attacks as an absolute good. What is the utility of this rhetoric? Well, in a niche community with a statistically super high population of relatively outcast people, it's to jam a massive thumb in everyone else's eye, even while the last point on my bullet points slaps everyone around. We can see pretty categorically that the majority of threads that get closed, the beginning of the end starts when this rhetoric is trotted out, and ends with it from administration.
Which comes to administration. There IS a "Glom bias". What I do not think there is, is a system of "I like Glomdoring's lore/players/admins/skills/design/npcs, and this player is from Glom and so I will listen to them". Possibly in very isolated situations, but come on. What I think is a better lens with which to view this is to take the (shoddy) rhetorical analysis above and think about what its ultimate effects are. Basically, Glom players philosophical rhetoric ingratiates them (or better put, ingratiated) them with administration by aligning their goals with those of the admin team. Some mistake is made with the release of a thing, there is player outcry, some players come in and say something to the effect of "Well we should critique this, but why can't we be more positive and friendly about it". This does two things: A) has the effect of shutting down the content argument, shifting the conversation to a form argument, and mollifies the sensibilities of administration. After all, they aren't 'shutting down discussion', they're insisting on "doing it the right way", even if the net effect is still for the discussion to end.
How do we get from there to a systemic Glom bias instead of just a bias towards "some glom players"? Players with this sort of attitude pass through the ephemeral process more easily, while others become increasingly frustrated with the inherent contradiction even if, or especially if, they can't put their finger on why it bothers them so much. This, the makeup of the administrative team shifts. Just as players clearly self-segregate over time and form pretty resilient org philosophies, regardless of the generally shifting populations, the admin team too forms a general culture that persists and self-selects. That culture and Glom's align, thus the "Glom ethos" tends to 'catch more flies'. This isn't a natural and inviolate law of the universe, it's the direct result of choices made by individuals, and shaped by the constraints/policies provided. It's fixable, but you have to want to fix it.
PS: Positivity culture and corporate optimism overall is very bad and highly ascendant IRL too, which is part of why it's so dominant here. Google for articles or I can add them tomorrow, have a dinner date to go to.
For me personally, Esoneyuna, I did what you suggested. I moved on from Lusternia and spent my time on other games. So did many players who retired. The problem here is that Lusternia, as a community, would prefer not to lose its players to other games, and this thread is, directly or indirectly, an attempt for players to give voice to why this is happening. And speaking about why you leave a game that you once loved is, by definition, negative. Policing and gaslighting people for being "negative" when they have very real frustrations accumulated over months and years is not a good way to have an honest conversation, which this game must do if there is to be a turnaround.
(clan): Falmiis says, "Aramelise, verb, 1. adorn with many flowers."
Yeah I left for a year, maybe more. Complete cut, didn't even speak to people from the game.
We don't -want- people to feel they have to completely abandon the game, that is the WHOLE point. It's not one or two negative nancy's rage-quitting, there has been a pretty mass exodus honestly from some point after I left (which was well before the last ascension) so shouldn't we address the why, rather than keep pointing fingers at those who left for being the problem in the first place? We don't want people to get to the point that their only option is to completely quit.
I think, by contrast, the thing that killed the game for me was the knight overhaul. I was actually overall doing okay with class imbalance. I would lose fights every time but still had fun doing it to an extent because knights just felt fun to play. The knight overhaul really hurt. It made knights unrecognizable and took away a lot of things from them. They lost flavour, became somehow more inert, somehow more linear, and I felt like the original design was something the majority of the warriors of the game had no part in... We got opportunities to put bandages on it, which I give the admin credit for, with a special report, but a lot of the magic was gone for me. I used to feel a certain drive to challenge myself and run to a fight and now I just feel like a cripple.
For what it's worth, I think Lusternia is relatively good about dealing with explicit abuse of other players where it happens. For my part and for others, frustration comes from more insidious things: the refusal to address game balance: re Glomdoring, people arguing in bad faith, and people who stand to benefit from the status quo dismissing others as just lazy or bad at the game. Just because it doesn't involve swearing or personal attacks doesn't mean it isn't incredibly damaging to other players' enjoyment of the game and their motivation to continue playing. Tone is not the same as content.
If it's one or two people who have a problem with an org, then it might just be them. If it's the majority of people who have to interact with them, then there's a problem. No one in this thread from the "losing" side has encouraged people to stop playing, and I think it's a shame that some are.
(clan): Falmiis says, "Aramelise, verb, 1. adorn with many flowers."
I am going to leave here a post made by @Enya on the other thread, which I think is important to keep in mind before we start telling people who are unhappy with the state of the game that the problem is their attitude.
For me personally, Esoneyuna, I did what you suggested. I moved on from Lusternia and spent my time on other games. So did many players who retired. The problem here is that Lusternia, as a community, would prefer not to lose its players to other games, and this thread is, directly or indirectly, an attempt for players to give voice to why this is happening. And speaking about why you leave a game that you once loved is, by definition, negative. Policing and gaslighting people for being "negative" when they have very real frustrations accumulated over months and years is not a good way to have an honest conversation, which this game must do if there is to be a turnaround.
Here is my counterpoint to him:
There is a difference between critique, and being consistently negative. It was also directed more towards behavior on clans, discords, tells, IG conversations etc than it was to this topic.
Comments
More a case of we are getting lots of new newbies in and now the negative people are gone hopefully we can retain them.
The game is clearly recovering now that those people have left. The evidence is clear. Look at all these forum threads regarding player retention. Clearly, the toxic people have left and no toxicity remains.
I have to ask. Do you honestly think that you are a person that people delight upon interacting with? Do you honestly think you converse, or communicate in a way that is slightly conducive to progressive conversation in any context? I think you need to perform some introspection.
Your disingenuous branding of 'toxic' people is, for all irony, quite toxic.
The level of trolling done, condescension in general, metagaming, lack of balance in skills, that whole Library debacle (which I believe is now being addressed, though we have Ascension on us so I certainly am fine with changes in general being slightly delayed), mindsets of tit for tat when balance comes up as an issue, misinformation, etc...
These are things that are driving people away. Which sadly leads to the other big issue, lack of population in general. Celest, Serenwilde and Hallifax being near to dead almost constantly has only served to drive potential influx away, and lessened choices for new people.
I'm having a great time with the influx of newbies we are getting and I'll do my best to keep them entertained and interactive. I see a future for the game and as long as we keep positive and keep promoting these new players the old toxicity we used to have will eventually fade away to a bad memory.
Edit: Perhaps it is also wise to remember that a lot of us have close friends who left for combat imbalance reasons, and that referencing the people who left as essentially "toxic players who had it coming" is going to make emotions run high.
Sometimes this is replicated on other mediums but often they aren't, sometimes these discussions only get to the forums because the players present at the time in discord personally bring them across.
This has also happened with the forums as well, it's just that the forums are more accessible thanks to things like threads which help are larger group of people participate than whoever happened to be online then the convo started.
Glomdoring has dominated the game for the last ~1.5 years, undeniable fact. You say the organisation won't allow other people to have a turn - how would you propose Glomdoring goes about doing that? Short of simply not playing, I am not actually sure how this would look. Perhaps that is the solution some people would like to see, but I think most people can acknowledge that its both unlikely and unreasonable to expect that of people.
I'm asking this from the perspective of someone who both had a fondness for several of the people that retired and as someone who does not have the time to play very much anymore, but when I do am a fairly significant asset to my organisation in the pk department. I log in to play with friends and to help them succeed, not for any particular desire to shake people down for their lunch money. Perhaps there is context here I'm unaware of due to that reduced presence, but I'd be interested if you can see a reasonable way forward that I have missed.
Okay, so if I message an admin directly and voice my concerns to them about a game mechanic, are you going to be all up in arms because you weren't part of the conversation? That could inform their choices in the future!
The forums, discord, whatever - they're all tools for data collection by admin, you're right. And that's awesome, it gives the admin more avenues to see what the players are thinking about.
And not everyone on the discord is on the forums, and not everyone on the forums is on the discord. So why get rid of a helpful tool like that? There's no need to blame discord.
Otherwise, dominating because of good group tactics and cohesion, and well designed synergy is fine. It's just that the rest of the efforts to prevent anyone else getting much the same, or immediately trying to argue 'balancing' any fixes or improvements to keep everyone else right about where they currently are (looking at every damned Warrior report ever, there, despite Glom benefiting JUST as much as anyone else, more with Pureblade bleed working quite well with the general mechanics of Glomdoring)...THAT is what is asked of when calls are made to give others a turn.
No one wants a handout where any Org on top quits for a bit...and I've actually seen that in action, one org in another game absolutely dominated all the others, members intentionally went dormant, alted, or jumped ship to help other orgs...every damned thing fell apart for the original org and the game in general for a while. So no, none of that. Just less of the metagaming, false/mistaken statistics, trolling, etc and we'd all be much better off.
This really encapsulates one of the reasons Lusternia is crumbling for me because that "negative" label isn't just applied to abusive types but also to people who just aren't happy with the game.
It reads as "The people that didn't like aspects of the game left so now everything's going to be great", but the reasons those "negative people" left are very likely still present and it's just a matter of time before the newbies encounter them and leave for the same reasons.
The discord, however, is an avenue that is moderated by a group of players which in itself isn't great given the complaints mentioned about people not feeling welcome and the like. Aside from that, in a smaller server that I admin we've become really aware that discord is terrible for actually communicating about important issues when you want feedback from people that might not be online at the time.
For example, I happened to be online when Orael was talking about the melder overhaul so I was able to send through a log of another chat from the Serenade about what would be cool for the Hartstone part of that. If I was not online at that time I wouldn't even be aware that apparently there wasn't really any Hartstone stuff for the overhaul. If this was on the forums then not only would it be unlikely to be missed, even more people could have contributed their ideas.
So yeah, I don't actually think discord is as generally helpful as it might feel to people engaged with it, it just splits off communication to an unofficial channel which is harder for people to follow if they're not online when things actually get discussed but if you want to be sure you know what's going on you've gotta consistently check in on it because there's no guarantee the info will cross over to other mediums.
We've literally had new players who start, do well for a bit, and then leave because the game is imbalanced and they can't understand why the admin let it go on. We've had older players who have stopped playing for the same reasons.
We've had some toxic people leave. We've had some players who weren't toxic but were pretty bitter about the state of the game leave.
Having said all that, I'm all for giving new people reasons to stay, but your reasoning is pretty unsound. Problems don't go away just because you try and ignore them, and people are going to have the same problems in the future that we have had in the past, especially if we don't address said problems .
theatre due to the snowy weather.
hungering malice.
Their superior skillsets and group synergy is just one part of why they're unbearable to play with, as an org.
It's that they also deflect and deny this mechanical superiority. Check out the other thread and see this: bleed synergy was the topic, and it was immediately diverted to how other orgs have a similar synergy, too. Dustaffs, lol. It's the same with the IllusorySelf and feathercharm threads: "oh but NOSES, let's talk about that instead". Remember the old "fear is OP, nerf wolf" debacle? This is that, writ large.
And on top of that, they have the gall to say that Glomdoring is amazing because they have such positive attitudes, not because of any mechanical advantage that they have. That the snowball effect is just myth, and that power does not breed power, and being on top makes it exponentially easier to keep being on top. That all other orgs MUST be bad and MUST be toxic to be losing their players in large numbers. "If only you were as positive as we were!". Give me a break.
I'm going to call out Glomdoring as a whole here, without regret. While I will concede that not every Glomdoring player is equally accountable, each one of them enables the worst of their playerbase. By not acknowledging the faults in your own organization and the way some of your members speak with dripping condescension, you are, in fact, part of the problem, and must be held accountable to change, as well.
Accountability is necessary.
I don't think I'm the only person who has experienced this, and I know for a fact that people have given up being envoys before because it is an extraordinary drain to have to argue with the smooth, seamless stone wall that is Glomdoring deflection.
- I can not work out a valid kill strategy as illuminati (with tarot) nor as pyromancer (with runes or dreamweaving). Which requires me to bring atleast 1 person that can kill in 1vs1 which often means bring a Gloom.
- Tables get turned on us and we get overrun by more and better combatants which results in Glom coming to our aid.
- I have been around far less due to volunteering, work and evening classes.
I sympatize, and while I do not agree that this is due to glom players specificly, I do hope things get fixed so all orgs get players again.Though I also believe part of that fix is to reduce number of orgs and possibly just start over with 2 or 3 new orgs in part to get rid of old issues, in part cause I think we have far to many orgs, classes, sub classes to be able to balance things. I know the feeling. I have played in an undersiege celest, an undersiege Serenwilde, an undersiege Hallifax for long periods of time. One thing I like about Gaudiguch is that our stance is vortex entities are not important, go defend if you wish but if they die the party goes on. Please don't ever force anyone to pvp, even in different climates. One person disrupted your alliance with Glomdoring yes, Magnagora's council and citizens decided to let that person do it though so it does not result to just one person being responsible.
Long before that Magnagora was always we have the most fighters we'll take this village, wildnodes, insert stuff here even though it was prearranged to go to Gaudiguch. Though I rather have those discussions IC as having them here might seem I blame players for that rather than the IC argumentation for chosing an ally that it is.
OOC going IC has been an issue on all sides.
And now I'll break out a pet peeve I have had since the beginning of this topic and it is not directed to the person I have been quoting or anyone in particular. It seems from this topic people seem to think that bitter is not toxic, and you are free to think so of course.
But bitterness, being consistently negative, exposing new players who should be full of wonder while utterly confused at the same time to that negativity is harmful. Worse of all if you put multiple bitter/negative people together they will work in on eachother and become even more bitter and/or negative. I say this as a person that is predominantely negative about the state of this game and who has fallen victim to this.
I am very lucky I have people I interact with who point me to positive things, like quests, fun people to interact with but even those people will get worn down in the end if you don't adjust you mindset now and again.
And don't get me wrong, I get the frustrations, I get the feeling of hopelessness and the feeling that other players are out to grief you and whats not. I can only suggest to you when you get that feeling of hopelessness, take a break. And I mean a real break where you stay away from the game, the forums, the discord and don't talk with friends about the game. Play other games, go out and do stuff whatever you enjoy. And when you can truly say wow I want to try out Lusternia cause of the good memories, rather than thinking about the bad, try it out again without looking at the forums, discord or whatever else ooc channels you have.
And once again that is not to say things don't have to change, things do have to change, but you don't cause change by being negative, you repulse people that are motivated to cause change (like new volunteer admins).
edit: sorry the layout got totally ruined cause I fail at these forums
For me personally, Esoneyuna, I did what you suggested. I moved on from Lusternia and spent my time on other games. So did many players who retired. The problem here is that Lusternia, as a community, would prefer not to lose its players to other games, and this thread is, directly or indirectly, an attempt for players to give voice to why this is happening. And speaking about why you leave a game that you once loved is, by definition, negative. Policing and gaslighting people for being "negative" when they have very real frustrations accumulated over months and years is not a good way to have an honest conversation, which this game must do if there is to be a turnaround.
We don't -want- people to feel they have to completely abandon the game, that is the WHOLE point. It's not one or two negative nancy's rage-quitting, there has been a pretty mass exodus honestly from some point after I left (which was well before the last ascension) so shouldn't we address the why, rather than keep pointing fingers at those who left for being the problem in the first place? We don't want people to get to the point that their only option is to completely quit.
Accountability is necessary.
If it's one or two people who have a problem with an org, then it might just be them. If it's the majority of people who have to interact with them, then there's a problem. No one in this thread from the "losing" side has encouraged people to stop playing, and I think it's a shame that some are.
There is a difference between critique, and being consistently negative. It was also directed more towards behavior on clans, discords, tells, IG conversations etc than it was to this topic.