Winning your seventh artisanal carries a prize of 700 credits, if I'm not mistaken, plus the additional 300 credits. I think that's good enough already.

For RP, that would be lovely, if there was an ideal way of rating RP. There isn't. Hence, rewards for roleplay have to be small and incremental; generally speaking, RP has to be its own rewards (It is). Treating roleplayers well adn having a world that is responsive and welcoming to roleplay is orders of magnitude more important than rewarding it. I would totally support a permanent buff for outstanding roleplayers that was related to roleplay, and not a set of combat powers.

For combat, stupid idea. Seriously. The combat ranks are a joke, and top-notch fighters already are immensely overpowered (Compared to the average guy) without them gaining more buffs simply for being good fighters.

There already is an alternate route to demigod, and it's called influencing. It just needs to be tweaked and improved so it's as viable as bashing.

ADDITIONAL SUGGESTION: By spending Essence, gods can raise a mortal to the condition of Herald without them being Demigods. Such Heralds would gain powers related to their Divine. Lyreth's herald would have a bonus to Arts and Dramatics, and the ability to cast illusions and disguise himself; Morgfyre's herald would have an expanded buffer for food, the ability to listen to tells to people to and from the room with him, and so on. Those powers would be unique, and I think that if we can't trust the Divine to give their Heralds generally balanced powers that one can live with, we're really screwed.

Maybe I am looking at this differently, but I am seeing the reward of demigod not as a buff, but as a reward for acomplishment and status symbol.

how about this... we leave the normal system as it is and you can have "upgrades" via different routes... Achieving -some- points as a demigod via RP will give you a couple of extra powers that affect your 1st circle persona... kicking everyone's asses inside and outside the Arena gives you -different- points that will help you develop 2nd circle power... achieving maximum ranking in Artisanal opens up your 6th circle powers...

of course, this would allow you to have just one circle...

let's say that Ialie finally managed to bash herself to Demigod.. well, due to her both artisanal and RP points she has gained she's able to chose between Demigod of the 1st or the 6th circle...

Thats a cute idea.

Regardless, Demigods really need to be tweaked in regards to the horror that is Phoenix.

As much as I agree there should be other ways to reach a status like that the entire system would need to be heavily revamped. If this ever happened it would take a long, long, time. Mainly because people would rather see things that effect everyone like Aethercraft specializations, Family system, new archetypes (PLEASE I want to know the two other ones), new skills, new cities, etc. before seeing a new system to cater to the minute amount of the population that would be effected by the change.

Double post. I didn't even hit the button twice...

What I really dislike about the current system is that it rewards dutiful effort with godhood.

I don't have a problem with titans having little bonuses for reaching the highest level. That's a nice goal to work towards.

Demigod status is a bit different though, as conceptually it is much nearer to Ephemeral level in the pantheon of Lusternia. You become an avatar for a chosen god, your name shows up differently in the who list, you gain incredibly significant bonuses in combat, and you get RP-meaningful shout and enter/exit messages.

Why is that awarded for monotonous bashing/influencing? Wouldn't it be better to call them titans, and leave 'mortal' godhood to those who have demonstrated their skill and aptitude to play such a role rather than those who can afford the time just to bash constantly for a year or so?

I also really dislike the thought of demigods playing an active role in regular combat, I think it is a game-breaking decision to make demigods so powerful against regular characters. Eventually, it will be how many demigods are on your side that matters in any significant conflict, the rest of the team will just be there to make up the numbers. Since I doubt that will change, I'd like to at least offer top combatants in all the orgs another way to access demigod privileges.

Thankfully phoenix provides at least some small bit of discouragement for demigods rushing in and overpowering regular combat, I suppose.

It is true that giving this kind of roleplay and combat bonus to people rewarding not their ability to fight, not their ability to roleplay, not even their ability to dump massive amounts of money (massive amounts of money) into Lusternia by credit whoring, but rather their ability to have enough free time and not enough of a life so they can bash themselves to level 100 seems to be a bit of a bad idea and a holdover from Achaea and traditional MUDs.

It seems to me the argument is the name "demigod" nor really what it confers.

Aye, but the RP bonuses are part of that as well.

How many active Demigods do we have? How many of those are bad RPers? Who doesn't deserve being a demigod? The only one I know is Kaervas and never seen anything wrong with it..

And I guess I'm part of the people that belive that Ixion scale warriors are supposed to be overpowered and rule over the basin... Those are the ones that should actually turn the tide of the battle. Like a champion in a war or an ace in a dogfight...

EDIT: Now that I think of it, I really dislike to all of the people who moan on how overpowered a skill is... the only time I have moaned about a skill is warrior bashing.. but we REALLY need some lovin' in there... so I can only say one thing to those moaners

So far we have three demigods. Kaervas, Aesyra and Argilent.

However, Kaervas is the only one who worked for the well-being of his organisation. Argilent just bashes, and Aesyra helped Celest only for a short time after getting Demigod, and that was mostly griefing Magnagora - killing Ardrak, etc. Soon after that she got bored and left.

As for their RP, when Argilent was in the Serenguard, he didn't struck me as an RP-heavy type. At least he stayed IC, but his comments on giving Champion position to the biggest "bunny-frier" were annoying. I can't comment on Aesyra, rarely spoke to her.

Isn't Niara a demigod as well?

Yes, as well as Melanchthon.

How could I forget about them!

You forgot Kharvik, too

I thought Kharvik was a titan

I saw him once or twice in Mag, tho

As much as I'd like to say, "Let have Vernals be the RP equal to Demigods", I'm hesitant to even offer the suggestion, as Vernals kicked some serious ass way back when (you all did read the histories, right?). It sounds like Vernal gods were far, far more powerful than Demigods, once they figured out all of their powers.

But yes, I do want to see something for people that aren't combat oriented. I don't give two craps about combat in Lusternia anymore, because I've turned my character into a leader, diplomat, etc, and I know there are others out there, even prominent characters, that are the same way.

You should not get to be a god because you've won a bunch of artisinals (bashing to demigod makes sense, because you've perfected your body, painting to demigod sounds retarded). There should be some kind of criteria that you have to achieve, like being a leader in an organization, having your explorer rank up, creating a name for yourself. Something hard, with lots of different qualifications, but do-able.

Non-combatant demigods (or, RP-demigods if you will, but I shudder to use the term, as you should all be roleplaying anytime you're logged on, by simply "being you") could have bonuses like being able to self title, or to use divine fire. Maybe you could also have special bonuses, based on how you rose to fame, like removing my cost to title and describe manse rooms, or to create items (kind of like a special queue for design submissions, and you get one a year).

I was having a discussion with Exarius last night (be afraid), and we were saying how some people who went and bashed for hours and hours, and nobody really knew anything about them, and half the time they leave, because they've "won" (not in such ooc terms, but you get the point). The people with the least noteriety get the biggest reward from doing something over and over again, while the people with the most noteriety (leaders, master merchants, heads of family, etc etc) are left with very little. Lusternia is about many things, but I don't think it's simply about bashing for hours, or else they would have never coded anything else. Demigod is the pinnacle of player acheivements, and perhaps there should be an alternate route to it, something that falls in line with what Lusternia really is.

Here's my very controversial idea.

Remove titan and demigod. Entirely. No such things in the lore, as far as I can tell. Those mortals who came closer to divinity did so by being raised into Vernals, who actually exist in the lore. There was a lot of opportunities to "bash up" to what we could call titan or demigod-levels in the history (especially the Vernal wars, which seemed to be a very dangerous time, even without the Soulless), yet it didn't happen.

Of course, we could also argue that Avechna's protection and praying to the Fates didn't happen in the lore either. But that was because everything happened there as it was weaven by the Fates, while in the present times mistakes apparently happen, hence the praying and coming back to life. It's apparently related with the characters being "speshul", as we learn after taking the Fates' trip at the start of the game. I resent that approach, that player characters are somehow more exalted than their surroundings, but - you work with the tools given.

One thing I really liked was the fact that even though Aesyra left the game, she was still used in the Hajamin/Morgfyre event. So at the very least, if Kaervas left the game someday he might still be used in a Fain event.