To avoid the other thread being hijacked further, let's discuss the problems of experience gain, cost of death, and Titan/Demigod status. Fulcrux death really doesn't affect many people, and I think its quite minor in consideration of global balance.

Personally, I like that death has some cost, but isn't often the equivalent of a week's worth of effort. It means that combat and conflicts can be joined without having to worry overly much about not being good enough to survive. It encourages everyone (highbies and lowbies) to have a go, whether it is in raiding, defending, or just fighting over whatever idealogical issue is at hand that week.

I don't think its a bad thing to reward players well for their time. Nor is it a bad thing to place Titan/Demigod at the reach of more than those who can dedicate every waking hour to their bashing macros. I do think that for this reason level 99+ should have their own wizgames, however, so that they can be slightly discouraged from participating in regular large-scale conflict... conflict in which they are almost certain to dominate.

There are quite a few who seek more tangible hurt inflicted on those that lose at combat, and in this vein I would be happy with say, double experience loss on conglute, and maybe half the current conglutination loss for lich/transmigrate. That would make the disparity between praying and conglutinating/vitae'ing a little less, without destroying the purpose of the skill.

Please, go wild with other opinions.

I'm still on a high, I don't think anything can shake it. gods

psh titans and demigods are FAR from certain to dominate group fighting, sure they can thunderclap but i can kill a titan just as easy as someone who's lvl 50.

Yeah but you don't routinely have to fight Daevos, Murphy or Kaervas.

One thing I should have said in regards to lich/transmigrate... if both are made limited-use (ie, once a RL day), then in my opinion no experience loss whatsoever is fine.

If I had my way, I'd totally remove conglutination entirely; however, seeing as that is not like to happen, I think a 3-5x increase on conglutination experience would be fair. When I conglutinate, I usually don't lose 1%. I repeat: I do not lose 1%.

This essentially boils down to no loss at all. As far as I'm concerned, this degrades combat. There is no need to be a good combatant. Anyone can throw themselves at you in a mob and pray for a lucky behead or something. If they die, they lose nothing. If you die, you lose nothing (except for power). In the end, it becomes a freakin waste of time. Look at combat rankings! People honest to god just don't care because there is no reason to care.

Look at the top 10 ranked combatants: #2 Vickhtor, #3 Abrael, #4 Nirrti, #5 Wes... these people are just out of novicehood. I could probably beat all of them at once with a true disfavor (in fact, I'm pretty sure I could)... so could Kaervas, Daevos, Murphy, etc. How disappointing.

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It took something like -6- years for Achaea to get a dragon. SIX YEARS FOR -ONE-... and look at how many titans/demigods we have.

I think one reason people object to this is because in some freakish nightmare, Lusternia empowers level 99 and level 100 far beyond any IRE game. Divine Fire is the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. Thunderclap deals 81% max health of ALL enemies in a room. It seriously needs a major overhaul... if it is going to be so easy, it shouldn't so all that worthwhile.

A demi-god can divine fire. How will you easily defeat that? If Geb were a titan, he could kill Murphy in two attacks. Yes, just two attacks and you would be down to him. No effort on my part as his player, and I bet you would be here complaining about it. If Geb were a demigod he would never die. No one could kill him. Heck teams of people would not be able to kill him, but he would be able to kill teams of people in his demesne. No, you could only kill a titan that does not know what he or she is doing. You have not faced the true power that those levels give the player yet.

How come I lose like 5% every time I conglut?

But I agree with you, however, that titans and demi-gods should not be so overpowered. Just the stats boost should be nice enough.

Since I'm level 93, 1% to me is around 5% to you (or something like that).

Hmm, maybe. What is the cost of a vitae & praying death at your level, for comparison? I thought conglutination was around 3% at my level, and I'm 79... but I can't remember exactly and I'm willing to trust your numbers. Favours and harmony blessings affect this, right?

I'm not sure that combat rankings show no-one cares about combat though. Combat rankings are based on arena spars, where death costs absolutely nothing... doesn't this show that people are willing to actually go and engage in combat for real, rather than just duelling in simulation?

Edit: Another thing that I was thinking about... I know this isn't the policy of any IRE games, but what if PK death in addition to the current XP drain, affected some sort of scale that was important only to combat? So that winning real battles (not arena spars) granted you boons of certain kinds, and losing constantly heaped certain combat-related penalties of some kind? Not ones that make it easier/harder to fight and win, just useful abilities or something of that kind? While I like that the one experience-track is simple and allows many different activities to result in mechanical character growth, the only way to reverse other people's character growth is by combat, and that one experience track affects most of the characters ability in all activities. I don't know if that makes sense, nor do I know how it could be realized... but its a random thought.

Favours and blessings do not change experience loss.

Look at the top 10 people in combat rankings. Not a single one of them could stand up against the "real" top 50. Do you see Geb? Murphy? Kaervas? Daevos? Amaru? Terenas? Munsia? Ethelon? Shamarah? Diamante? However, since combat is become more and more asinine with two-hit kills and such, there is no interest. There are people who are well and fine because they were established long ago and carry with them former IRE combat experience. However, the ability to "rise up" anymore is not a matter of skill or strategy.

Take Ravlok. He was absolutely terrible. He couldn't cure at all... but he could behead most people in two sweeps. People honestly thought this was something special. However, he didn't need to cure. He didn't need strategy. He didn't need anything really other than a single marco. I don't find that ideal.

I, as closest to Titan, i think that yes Titans and demigods are a bit overpowered. Thunderlap and Dvinefire should go away.
With divine ifre its possible to go to enemy nexus and kill 3 guards there and leave unharmed. Every 1 hour.
Its 72 guards per day, no metter how many defenders your enemies have.

Its not something players should be able to do.

If demigods and titans will be wichout divinefire and thunderclap could help in general. I dont think rsing conglutination exp lose is needed.

I too lose a bit less then 1% when conglutinate. But 1% for me is like 15 astral linked mobs, im human with harmony.

About divine fire, it's either been changed or it's bugged because player attacks still go through, except I don't take damage (possibly wounds but I never checked for sure). So it's possible for someone to web whore me behind divine fire while someone else uses judgement or whatever. It only protects against mobs and damage it seems.

O_o did you have fire up when I was able to aeon you in faethorn a few days ago?

No

I agree, actually. Some aspects of combat are pretty excessive.

But will people losing more/less XP when they die change this?

Promotes random jumping?

As kaervas said, divine fire has been somewhat nerfed.

As far as titan's go, I have been sparring daevos a bit lately, so far I stand 7 wins, 2 draws and a loss over the last month or so (only roughly so don't bite my head off daev)

He knows excatly what he's doing, and yes one of those wins and one of those draws were without the champ helm.

I will admit though, wounding seems to disregard level after about 55 or so (in terms of the damage is do, which is pretty minimal) So to me, lvl 60 and lvl 99 don't really have much bearing on how hard they are to kill, sadly it comes down to the armour they are wearing as far as character stats go.

Anyway Geb, you and I are a testament to the fact that you can kill anyone with lvl 75+ and some skill. What's heartburst like against differing levels, do you find it to disregard them as such?

I don't think I was clear when I was talking about the two hit kills. You have sparred Daevos, but you are not actually fighting him. When you spar him he is not using thunderclap against you, and the outcome of the spars are not important beyond personal enjoyment and satisfaction. When he is fighting enemies of his organization, he can use a swing thunderclap combo. Now that combo is enough to kill one person easily. With the aid of others, he could kill multiple people. If the other people aiding him are titans, he can be assured of killing plenty of other people with their combined thunderclap attacks when his enemies are engaged with others.

Yes, against a titan that lacks thunderclap I have a reasonable chance of defeating the person. Against a titan that still possess his/her thunderclap, I can be killed by just the simple act of hurting me while I am off sip balance and then Thunderclap. That process does not take any skill to complete, and no amount of skill and preparation can really protect a person from it.

... in other words, to kill a titan you need a team? That sounds fair enough to me.. Titans -should- be harder to kill. I don't like them much, and I don't like how powerful they are, but I think it would be ridiculous to be able to RP a Titan if you weren't stupidly tanky.

Right, Daevos hits pretty hard with his damage weapon so yeh it would be a 2 hit kill which is pretty retarded.

I'm personally against the idea of thunderclap, A different ability should replace it, something that doesn't mean instadeath to a room if someone should boulderblast, or another titan should thunderclap right afterwards.

i'd personally like to see Titans have an aura that gives them and their allies a boost to either defence or offence, or something along those lines. Even maybe a room wide heal like puella but not heal as much obviously, which would work nicely to pull their offensive power away if they wanted to use it.

EDIT: As far as titan/demigods go, I don't believe they should be rediculously hard to kill as a non titan. One of the main reasons i love this game so much, is that i DON'T need to grind and keep up like WOW or other lvl stacked games. I love that with the right skill you don't need to be near their level to nail them. Its much more personal that way (like OMG its Geb, better get a move on.....not nah he's only lvl 76 i'm lvl 89 he doesn't have a hope in hell)

Just because someone is a bashing nazi i don't think it gives them a right to have a massive advantage over those of us who spend most of their in game time perfecting their combat skill. A small advantage is fun and a challenge, a large one needing a team to take them down is, I believe, rediculous