I am not certain what exactly you are arguing. The point of this thread is not complicated. People, such as yourself, are just making it complicated.

This is not a discussion regarding experience loss. Essence is NOT experience. Essence is the fuel a demigod uses to maintain their sort of half divine status and power their demigod abilities. It is NOT experience.

These skills being discussed mitigate *experience* loss. Since demigods have no experience to lose there is nothing to mitigate. If the demigod falls back down to titan, those skills will once again have their full usage because the character will once again have experience.

The essence system is a universal system unique to demigods. Everyone paid the same amount of essence for their special abilities. Everyone paid the same amount of essence when they died. It being equal helped to give it a natural sort of balance because all demigods were equal. They could all do the same things. They all had the same costs.

Again essence is not experience. You cannot use experience for other things if you happen to not lose it when you die. Comparing it to experience loss makes no sense. They have nothing in common except that killing NPCs can gain you both. These skills prevent you from losing XP upon death (and as long as it still shows "has been slain" on the deathsight, yes they do die regardless of abstract forum discussions). They say absolutely nothing about preventing you from losing essence upon death. They are working exactly as they did prior to demigod in that they are in fact preventing you from losing experience.

So to make them allow you to not lose essence is actually increasing the scope of the skill. Now they are not only preventing you from losing XP when you die as they did when you were working your way up to demigod, now that you don't actually have or use XP, they have morphed into preventing you from losing essence as well. That makes no sense and is actually upgrading these skills for demigods.

I will repeat. Essence is not experience. Prior to demigod, if I was resurrected or sacrificed for and did not have to pray, I would lose less experience. As a demigod that no longer applies because...I have no experience to lose. Any skills that applied to experience loss or gain should have no bearing on demigod essence. Essence and experience are not the same thing and people should stop treating them as such.

Well, I am not sure if it's an issue for any of the Demis who have it, but it seems kind of annoying to me. <.< Just seems fairer with the way you proposed, yeah.

Newp.

People having to deal with the consequences of their actions is a funny concept here in Lusternia. Catarin raids and dies so much, I assume Ixion does too, yet even if one was to put every effort they had in to hunting them down on Astral at every available chance, they are not fools. They will never lose it. The consequences of death are laughable, even as a Demigod--as it is now.

I've been hunting Ixion 100% of the time. He's died a number of times. Most of those have been lich deaths. See - not losing essence on lich deaths.

Actually if I raided that much on a regular basis instead of just one day field testing a new system, I likely would have serious trouble keeping demigod. I lost about 500k that day. If I couldn't bash astral to get it back due to being hunted, I'd have to hunt aetherbubbles and with seek, it would not be all that hard to find me. So I'd basically have to be something of a hermit.

But yeah, I'd likely just not play for awhile rather than actually lose it.

I don't know, Demis still get suspect if they die on prime, don't die? All I do is bash prime, and I still am in no essence troubles. Even if I died twice or thrice a day, I would still gain. (If I played that much to die that often.)

Our argument is that it shouldn't be monumentally harder to make one Demigod lose essence than another. If I am free, and I really want to kill someone, they'll die when bashing.

You didn't read what I wrote. I didn't write "Please, recap your arguments for me, I haven't heard them enough yet." I wrote, and I will quote "I don't know, Demis still get suspect if they die on prime, don't die? All I do is bash prime, and I still am in no essence troubles. Even if I died twice or thrice a day, I would still gain. (If I played that much to die that often.)"
Unless you like losing a mill essence to the avenger, and the other demi subsequently gaining that amount, you won't be able to drop him if he bashes prime alone.
But yes, I think I need to post again: I agree, Lich, Transmig and DarkRebirth should not negate essenceloss.

wtf Myndaen, my Ichogo's cooler. GTFO

I disagree with the premise of your argument, which semes to be (maybe I am misunderstanding!) "essence is not experience." Sure it's experience. You gain it by killing mobs and influencing, you lose it by dying (and don't lose it by liching.) It even follows the pattern where dying on prime costs more than dying offplane. Minor skills (seek, zap) that cost small amounts of experience do not make the mechanic substantially different from experience. The only major difference is that demigods can't level up by getting :censor:loads of experience, since they're already the highest level.

Experience and essence should be mechanically treated as such by everything that mitigates it. It already seems to cover conglutinate.

The issue is that these skills are imbalanced to allow for zero (read, none) experience loss for certain orgs, and not for others. When that is extended to demigod the problem is almost exactly the same.

Part of the reason people think there's a diference (there isn't) seems to be this idea that people should lose demigod. It's all very well to say "it should be possible to lose demigod" but does anyone ever think about what this means? Do people say "it should be possible to lose titan", gank a person like 50000 times, and put them back on level 21, and expect to get away without being called out on their BS? No. Why not? Titan has a good half of the benefits of demigod, including the off-prime regen and large stat boosts. And the size change thing I guess. There is a wide gap between "it should be possible to lose a level" and "it should be easy for me to make people I don't like lose a specific level." The former applies perfectly well to demigods. It's no more likely that I'm going to drop Kaervas from demi than it is that I'm going to drop him from 98% titan to level 95 or so. This is for a good reason.

You seem to be saying that because experience and essence share some similarities they are in fact the same thing. However, that seems a flawed argument at its core.

Yes, similar activities generate essence and experience. However, them being generated by the same sources does not mean they are the same thing. And I would definitely say that being able to use for certain abilities is a pretty major difference. Regardless of what you can use the essence for, and avatars have more options, this combined with the consequences of not having enough essence make for a completely different resource that just has superficial similarities to experience.

I think I'm not getting my ponit across well. In its current form, I do not believe trueheal is OP. I am simply pointing out that, even though they are different in flavor, trueheal and lich are used in exactly the same way. A sacraments user can use trueheal to escape essence loss just as easily as any necromancer user can use lich to escape essence loss. Comparing the two is quite important - you are suggesting a nerf to one while leaving the parallel alone. I am not suggesting any problems with TH; that would be a completely different topic. What I am trying to point out is that TH and lich are parallels, used exactly the same way in exactly the same situations. How does it make sense for one to cost essence and not the other?



If this is truly the point you are making, then nothing should prevent essence loss. In reality, essence and experience are exactly the same thing. If you want to say they are different things and that things which prevent experience loss should not prevent essence loss, let's apply the exact same thing to all skills which prevent experience loss.

While I would be okay with that, my real point goes back to the nature of lich. As I've pointed out, the mechanics seem to imply that lich is not a death, in the same way that trueheal is not a death. I can draw detailed parallels if it would help, but I would have thought that most fighters would recognize how similar they are for demigods. If lich is not truly death, then essence loss doesn't make any sense, just as it wouldn't make any sense for demigods to lose essence for using trueheal.

I hope I'm being clearer this time and not coming off as a troll, especially since I don't even have any Mag alts and have nothing to gain from this...I am simply trying to demonstrate that, even though lich looks like a death, it is in reality just the parallel of TH with a different creative flavor. Essence loss doesn't make sense for it since it is not actually a resurrection skill.

Aye, there are probably a slim few that do like to do that Mali. What I am not understanding is how you think an essence cap would be a bad idea for them, when not one paragraph later you state that people should have to suffer consequences from raiding, griefing, etc, etc. I got the impression that you were campaigning for people to "reap what they sow" and to be prepared for what may happen (excessive xp loss, praying, hunting, etc.) if they chose to do things that could incur such consequences. But also stating the same should not hold true to demigods, that they should have no consequences for doing the exact same thing. Since right at this point and time, a demigod could do these things all day and night for months on end, and never ever be at risk of losing demigod status. Now like I said in my original post, I may have misinterpreted it, but I think demigods should have either a cap on essence, or possibly something else that makes losing demigod something that can REALLY be plausable.

So, maybe it wasn't quite contradicting yourself, it just appeared to be in one post, that all non demigods should have to "pay the piper" if they choose to do things that could result in retribution, while saying that an essence cap (which I would consider a way to enable demigods to also "pay the piper") would not be a good idea.

I understand what Mitbulls is saying, on the fact that why make a skill not applicable to demigods and applicable to non demigods. I think if there was an actual change to lichdom, such as an exp loss/essence loss on liching, that it should definately make it fall under avenger status if the person be it a demigod or a normal mortal is killed by another player. I also think since the exp/essence free death of lichdom is one of the more significant things of the skill, that it would need to be replaced with something else.

I am not sure what to do about transmigration or darknest if the lich change were to occur, since it would be considered in poor taste to just change lich and not the rest across the board. So I can't even begin to speculate on what type of changes should happen with them, if it were to be something changed.

I do strongly think though, that demigods need some way of being killed. Not the improbable way that others have suggested (such as hunting them for days on end, and hoping they don't bash for an hour during that time so they can regenerate the minute amount of essence loss a death actually incurs on a demigod). Maybe an essence cap is not the right way to go, but there needs to be something in which it is feasable to truly make a demigod have to suffer the consequences of his or her actions. Which right now, is something that, while not impossible, is so astronomically improbable that it would not happen.

I think first off though, I guess figure out on what you want for demigods across the boards, then I would suggest either making a cap on essence (which would be a way to lighten up the amount of bashing that demi gods tend to do, along with making them susceptable to losing demigod status), or reinstating a much higher essence count loss, so that if they did choose to raid, grief or do anything else that could cause them death or risk of death, that the non demigod playerbase could actually kill them and have an actual chance of them losing demigod.

As for the whole demigods loving to bash, now I know that is not something that is 100% true. I have heard several mortals, titans and demigods complaining on how much bashing they have to do, and how much they hate the grind of it, but the rewards of either getting to titan or to demigod was what their goal was. After achieving this state, the only reasons I have heard for demigod bashing alot is not solely for building up essence reserves, but for beating out player A or player B in the exp rankings. I haven't heard many demigods just saying "OMG, I love to just sit and bash astral nodes until they are all drained! I love sitting and bashing the same things over and over again for hours upon hours each day. That is the best feeling in the world!!"

Now don't get me wrong, I am sure there are some people who enjoy monotonous, repetitive bashing of the same things over and over. So there are probably those few people, and maybe they are all demigods now, because of that. But it is something I really haven't heard much of.

I guess, like I stated, if you want to change the skills such as lich, transmigrate and dark rebirth to be "fair" for orgs that don't have access to them, prepare for the skills to be reworked to include things like avenger status, and possibly some other interesting attack/defense capabilites to compensate for the change. I don't think the admin would change the skills for only demigods is all, and that it would have to be changed across the board for all users of the skills.

In the meantime, since there is no truly probable way for demigods losing demigod status. I wouldn't worry too much about it at the moment. But if the admins do decide to make demigods actually have a chance of losing their status again, then maybe these skills should be readdressed at such time that it would be quite possible for a demigod to lose their demigod level.

edit - I noticed in a nejii post he quoted catarin (since I have catarin set to ignore, I dont usually see her posts). But I completely agree with nejii on his response. Experience and essence are exactly the same, just because someone says here have some meatballs, while someone else says here have some balls of meat, it does not make them truly different. Essence is the demigod version of experience, it is obtained in the same way as a mortal gains experience. And when you die, a mortal loses exp, while a demigod loses essence. So honestly, to say it is completely different is just silly. Just because they changed the word for exp when you get to demigod, does not mean that it doesnt act in the same way. The only true difference I think is that you can do things with your essence (aka burn it with certain skills) while exp only is lost when you die.

How does the argument that essence and experience should not be treated the same way somehow translate into all skills that effect experience should go away? I am not certain you are actually reading the arguments other people are making in favor of sticking with your original ideal. Which is fine...just..confusing.

As essence loss was before (where only conglutinate mitigated essence loss), demigods only were in danger of losing their demigod-hood very early on. After bashing a reasonable amount of time, this became a much less significant worry. It was really only feasible to even attempt to bring a new demigod back down to titanhood (and even that was a tremendous undertaking). Eliminating essence loss altogether through skills only limited orgs have access to takes it far and beyond what it should be and makes it rather unbalanced. Catarin's argument is a pertinent one, demigods are able to use their essence for many things that has no parallel in experience nor should there be one. This alone makes the two quite different even if the mechanics for gaining each are similar.

I don't think being able to use experience for abilities makes it a different resource more than it being gathered and lost in the exact same way makes it the same resource with an additional use.

Even if we accept that it's a different resource, you haven't supported the idea that the difference should extend to having different ways of losing it from death than experience. Since it's gained in the same way it follows that it should be lost the same way.

I think I have actually. It is not the same thing and its purpose is different than the purpose of experience. Therefore the arguments used for losing or not losing experience really have no bearing on losing or not losing essence.

Essence is a mechanic of demigods used to remain a demigod and to make use of the abilities reserved for demigods.

Experience is a resource used to gain levels.

Essence should be lost in whatever way is logical in order to keep demigods balanced and accomplish the purpose of its existence. It should not be tied to the same mechanics as experience simply because on the surface they are similar. The two in purpose and utility have nothing to do with one another.

They may be gained in the same way but they are not used in the same way nor do they have the same purpose.

@Derian - Please tell me how you are going to inform me about Sacrament users and how they use trueheal? A few days ago, you didn't even know how it worked and I happily explained it to you in another thread in the Idiots section.

In short, by your logic, anything that prevents your death or allows you to escape, is a noXP-loss ability. You cannot draw a parallel between trueheal and lichdom because they.are.not.the.same. If a Mag-player required 10p on their prompt to benefit from lich, I might buy your ludicrous claims, but they're not the same. There are conditions that stop it and it heals. A Sacrament user cannot die (that is, their health goes to -zero-) and escape essence/xp loss. You love arguing in circles.

You seem to be making that argument without considering the implications. The first point is that I disagree with you - essence and experience are the same thing, so changes to one will affect the other. The second point is that, because they are the same, essence loss should correlate with experience loss, just like essence gain correlates with experience loss. This is the way it works right now, and seems to be the most logical (and mechanically the simplest) way for it to work. The third point is that I would argue that the essence loss should not necessarily be the same for everyone, any more than experience loss should be exactly the same for everyone. The fourth point is that lich users are no more likely to save essence than trueheal users.

All of those things add up to why I disagree that lich should cost essence unless there are a lot of other changes.

Well, we'll agree to disagree then. They're clearly not the same thing.