I have been thinking more and more about the bonuses seal bearers automatically get in domoths and it seems fundamentally off. Basically with no effort beyond the hour they spent (in some cases the 10 seconds they spent) they get a permanent advantage over all others in Domoth Battles for eternity. This is a rather big advantage as it basically allows for half the time investment for seal bearers for twice the gain.

My suggestion is to change it to the following:

Any person can form a bond with any Domoth. You can only have one bond active at any time. To get the bond you must claim the crown of the Domoth you are bonding with twice. Once you have done this, with the crown in hand, you can DOMOTH BOND . Costs a million essence.

While bonded, you get the current seal bearer benefits for that domoth. Half the time to claim it, double the time having it.

Sealbearers wuold need to form a bond as well however, they would only need to get the crown of their seal domoth once and it would only cost them 500,000. Sealbearer True Ascendants would need to form the bond but they also only need to get the crown once and it costs them 250,000 and they'd get the same timeframes they get now.

To sever a bond you need to DOMOTH SEVER . You cannot form a bond with another domoth after severing for a week. Severing can also cost essence but it would be a flat rate regardless of whether you had the seal or not. A million or so.

I still firmly believe that the whole mechanic of it needs to be reworked (specifically: Stage 2, Stage 3, and the rewards). This reworking should, itself, address the time issue instead of just putting a bandaid on the whole thing.

I don't really see that happening though. And unless the new mechanics you are suggesting involve no automatic bonuses for sealbearers, the idea stands. If the benefits change then the benefits from being bonded would change. It's not remotely dependent on the current Stage 2 and Stage 3 process.

The one we discussed not all that long ago did still have some bonuses for Sealbearers, but cutting the second stage down to 30 minutes total for non-Seal-Bearers and 15 for a Seal seems pretty much like a win all around. Though this does require moving it off of the aetherbubbles.

That's fine. Then the bonded would be 15 for bonded and 30 for everyone not bonded. Same deal.

If implemented-- but, like I said, I'd much rather they fix the system than put a patch on it and leave the whole thing in its same general state. If they want to throw this in on top of it, fine, but it's really not okay as-is. :/

I would not mind a mechanics change as it currently is a bit dull though I would like more than just a change of venue for Stage 3. Something along the lines of a scavenger hunt would be interesting. Nydekion probably could speak better to that though.

The whole thing is kind of vicious. Ascendants need crowns (reasonably) so they don't have to hunt constantly to get basic abilities like flying and some weird fear aura, yet that requires either 4 demigods or 3 demigods and being a warrior, and then you have to get no interference. And someone has to have a seal open.

Only kind of?

I vehemently take exception to the notion that Sealbearers got their seals through just an hour's of effort or through no or little effort. Sealbearers represent those few who through adversity of the entire populace rise to claim one of the great seals. Even if that challenge only took an hour, that one hour was a window of time that opens once every 20 years. Thus, one has to prepare for that window and enter knowing many others will also desire to win a seal. It is not "just an hour's of work"--it is representative of an intense focused challenge. These challenges may or may not change and become more difficult in the future, but certainly Sealbearers will be treated as having won a great, momentous event. I respectfully ask that this campaign to denigrate Sealbearers be put to rest and they be viewed as carrying the honour that they are obviously meant to have.

Is it within the realm of possibility that we can get the domoth mechanics themselves looked at, not in terms of Sealbearer vs. non but just overall?

Fffft! What the heck. It's just like those lazy olympic divers. They're only in the air for, what, a few seconds?! And they want recognition and medals and all sorts of crap. I mean geez, they're getting international reknown for falling down. What slackers.

Eh. I can respect that opinion that it is a great achievement that took a great deal of focus. I do not agree iwth it in all cases but that does not matter.

Those who achieve this already get a 2600+ credit artifact for their achievement. That is a huge prize. They also get the opportunity to attempt to become a True Ascendant. Another great prize.

Adding permanent large advantages into a game wide conflict system is too much. It tilts it from being a great prize for a great achievement to an unbalanced scenario.

Sure we can look at the mechanics. I do notice some people like throwing around the word "bandaid" as though if anything less than their ideas are implemented, then we are just putting a "bandaid" on the system. I don't think the system is seriously flawed. I am actually quite pleased that the system has been used quite a bit from what I can see. I am not fond of the idea of cutting down the time or moving it to astral. I have always said that we are open to looking at the rewards but I've only heard a few ideas regarding nature. Limiting the number of domoths to bond seems interesting. I read through Catarin's ideas and really don't like the idea of permanent bonds. I don't see how a scavenger hunt could feasibly be coded to be interesting--I guess we could generate 20 random rooms throughout the world and flash the room description and make you try to find it, but I have a hard time believing that would be fun or interesting after a few times--though it would give Kaervas an enormous benefit!

How do you defend the notion of the seal designed around influencing being determined by whom had the biggest gank squad killing the other influencers? I would like to think what you're defending actually existed, but it quite simply didn't in all but a few of the events.

To defend what it took a group one hour to do being better than what it took a single person all sorts of time to do is lunacy.

The point was adding an advantage that reflects what the seals and domoths are, which I think makes the seal challenges that much more integrated into the world. The artifact prize is besides the point! While we could look at tweaking what the advantage could be (maybe a flat rate instead of doubling), I don't believe including an advantage is too much and think it enhances the system.

Hmm, by bond I don't mean they get the benefits of that throne permanently. They would still have to go through the system as it is now. They would just get a bonus for having a particular affinity to that particular domoth making it easier to get that throne than another.

A bandaid is something that doesn't really change the flaws in a system, but just puts a cover over them (which the original suggestion in this thread would do, all of the other mechanical flaws would still be there). I think it's an apt description in this case.

We had a fair bit of a discussion in the other thread about it, but with the current power rewards-- people feel pretty driven to just do whatever it takes to "stop the other guy," which has been doing a fair job of disenfranchising half of the organizations from participation. Thus, at the moment at least, the things are mostly just "collect the Domoths for power!" I'd asked that the power rewards be reduced, and Catarin suggested removing them completely and replacing them with something else.

As to moving it to Astral-- you had said that one of the reasons against it would be that it would be "very easy to locate by others"-- but my suggestion was a new Domoth power, Domoth Reveal, that takes 5p to use. If used in the room with the object, it is revealed and then can be challenged, etc. The person who successfully completes the first stage gets the room name, everyone else either has to waste a lot of power checking all of Astral or wait for it to be revealed (or narrowed down). That seems to adequately address the stated concern I heard, though there may be others.

The bolded on it's own should of been enough, I mean seriously what other competition involving a MUD involves a 800 US dollar reward and then they get an extremely big advantage over other players on top of that, overkill seriously.

I am defending the notion that Sealbearers are Sealbearers, bearers of great power that can only be wrested during small windows of time. Perhaps these challenges included being leaders able to coordinate groups of people to help you. Think of it as being the captain of a team. In any event, I will be the first to admit that some of the challenges may not have been as good as they could be and maybe that will change in future challenges; however, that shouldn't lessen the meaning of what the Seals are or what bearing one means.