Actually I did not see your edit. I did mistake your post as a response to me though, but really don't care about that. My counters to your points are still valid in my mind, even if I made them under the mistaken assumption that they were directed to me.

Oh and as to the part about your edit again, those skills you are complaining about would only be awful if you actually had to spend lessons on them. Ascendant is an extra skill-set, which is not even needed to do anything in Lusternia but play at being ascended.

I'm sorry. I generally don't try to argue with someone who starts off a response with "your argument is irrelevant. Popularity contests are hard."

You have already stated it's a popularity contest. One million power that the the vast majority of it was collected by others. You now have some very useful abilities for winning the lusternian equivelent of Prom Queen, some of which are being drastically under valued. You want more. I think you have plenty. Again, I support some tweaks to the cult system and a few of the skills. You guys want overhauls and drastic changes to how much essence it requires. You just spent 1 million power that your commune members collected. Darn right you are going to work for it.

Seriously. Shuyin using Aegis on Alianna. Do you even realize how impossible it would be to win that fight?

Good question. We weren't expecting anything that would really be imbalancing for an individual. The way the admin have set up ascendants makes it seem like they think it's open to a large group of people, and as such shouldn't be given stuff like thunderclap - otherwise it'll be like thunderclap-era demigods. So instead, it seemed like it'd have useful stuff for the org they were in. When we hit the cult ability we figured a good amount of the following abilities would be something like that, even though it immediately seemed as though we couldn't use cults (we commented on this at the time, but Morgfyre said he wasn't going to discuss it since we didn't know the full extent of their powers - which was fair.)

Let's say that an hour's worth of work is, mm, 5 credits (that seems to be IRE's going rate). Then let's be generous and say it only took 300 hours of work. 9000 lessons worth of time.

Owch.

(Keep in mind that lessons can be gotten by doing nothing but "playing Lusternia" as well, and it was far over 300 hours)

Correct in part but not in whole. Take your comment about cults. Celina was talking about cults and thinking they were better than they are, so I was correcting her on that. And then you commented about how you didn't care about how cults work and whether they require an order or not. So it wasn't all valid really.



We are seemingly working off different definitions of "awful". For me, "awful" is a claim about a skill's value or usefulness, not about how easy it was to acquire. I think most people would intuitively understand it as such, too.

Celina: well, by all means fail to argue with it, but at least try not to make it sound like you've really won but aren't going to prove it because it's pointless to argue with the plebs. This "drastically undervalued" stuff is going to need support too, by the way. The three things we value most are aegis (not undervalued, we know it's awesome), portal (kind of useful, though it can't be used on aetherbubbles) and flight. If you're going to try and argue that sucking 70,000 essence per hour out of an ascendant/demi that sits there bleeding for your benefit is "drastically undervalued" then by all means do so.

Protip: Instakills still work. Second protip for free: Aegis turns off if I'm (the ascendant) about to die, continually smacking a person being kept alive due to aegis only means that eventually, the Ascendant will be in trouble due to the sheer amount of damage being taken on. The moment it turns off, boom, person dies and the Ascendant is in trouble. For best results, beat on both at the same time.

Just to nip this one in the bud: we won't divorce Cults from Divine Orders.

I'm not sure where the "order hopping" comments are coming up, but a Cult - once established - is a fairly permanent organisation until you leave the Divine Order (regardless of the activity of the patron). Every city and commune has at least one very active patron, so joining a Divine Order is not unreasonable. If you are holding out for a particular god, I applaud your perseverance, but the consequence of that is that you'll have to wait a while longer to establish a Cult.

Otherwise, we're open to suggestions for Ascendance, with the caveat that we are not looking to boost it up with new offensive skills. It is, by design, mostly utility-oriented and does not copy other skills already available.

Can I field this question?

Personally I was hoping for abilities that were worthwhile, as well as flavor. Lots of flavor stuff, like special room entrances/exits, possibly a personal haven, that kind of thing.

A cult that operates independent of Divine Orders (as I believe was originally intended, since the helpfile talked about how Ascendants couldn't be in orders) with no upkeep cost and only benefits instead of a cult being a drain. I don't have any problem with the cult abilities as such, but I think that they should be all based in the bottom of the skillset with lots of fun abilities up top.

Light combat utility: nothing super strong, but some stuff that gives you an edge.

If it's gonna be a flavor skill, reduce the essence costs on training. It's fine to make it flavor (though even as a flavor skillset it has nothing particularly interesting), but it shouldn't be super expensive flavor.

Shiri, Sojiro, and myself are all members of inactive orders. We are all required to order hop just to make a cult, even if we have absolutely no interest in the active Divine. (That's not to say that all of us have no interest-- I might have some in Nocht, for example, but it would require some more RPing than I've had the chance to do so far)

Further, if we're in an Order and the God goes inactive... well, over time people will drift out of the Order, the cult will mostly die, and it's time to order-hop again. It may not be the intent, but it definitely encourages order hopping to active orders with multiple members.

Let's assume I picked Charune. Now he's inactive after however long he spent in the position (a few months? I don't keep track), I either have to orderhop to Lisaera (who also left for a long time) or no one joins my cult so I can't use the abilities. That's where the "order hopping" stuff comes from. If you aren't changing cults, well, I guess we'll just have to deal, but I think it's very rare that you'll see these abilities used.



That's great. No one is really looking for personal offence.

EDIT: Ninja'd on both topics

I understand the reasoning, but I'd like to point out you're missing a grand opportunity for player content - which has always been one of the mainstays of the game.

There are several active Orders that have inactive Gods, with very involved Orderheads, though I do agree that tendency for Orders to become inactive does exist. However, we have yet to see whether Cults will dissuade people from leaving an Order (I suspect they will), even if the God isn't active.

This is what I believe is the crux of the issue, Vis just worded it better.

Oh for the love. Are you kidding me with that first statement? If you are going to be insulting with "your argument is wrong and irrelevant" then I'm not going to argue with it because you have obviously made up your mind. It has nothing to do with thinking you are below me or that I've won the forums debate. Save that kind of stuff for the Drama Llama.

But here you go. The drastically undervalued skills in my opinion:

Fearaura - Maybe not so useful for Seren/Glom. Certainly useful for Celest and Mag. Constant passive fear. Really useful for team combat.

Affinity - Takes the enemy mage longer to break. This means breaking wars will always be won by the ascendants team. They can meld faster than I can break. Now add Aegis on top of this. Good times.

Veneration - Cults are just freaking cool. Again, I understand it could use a little work. Once cults are fixed (or you can join an active order) then a lot of these abilities will become really cool and useful. I repeat. I support cult changes.

Portal - Instant portal from an enemy area? Really? Semi useful? Okay.

Omniscience - You can HEAR from Aetherspace and Aetherbubbles. Seriously. Maybe not the awe inspiring trans skill you were hoping for but that's not bad at all. Especially if you need to call home for help during a Domoth.



I'm glad, and I've seen how much you tank.

I suspect that it will help resist the drain for a while, but in the end... people tend to drift to active Divine. The cult will end up following just so that it has active members most of the time, in my opinion.

Sorry, but essence is not expensive. Essence is essentially experience that you can use to power certain abilities. You gain essence they same way you gain experience. Also, Ascendants who have a cult created can gain essence via the efforts of their cult members. Therefore I disagree strongly with the idea that training in ascendance is expensive. It is not like Ascendants are being forced to use lessons to train in this new skill-set.

Celina, telling you your argument is irrelevant isn't insulting. If I start bringing up how bad my guild skills are so I need a boost from ascendant, you would be right to tell me that my argument is irrelevant because ascendance's value shouldn't be based on the guild skills of its users...or however you choose to word it. So yes, I am serious. What word would you have preferred me to use?

EDIT: Geb, so far as we know ascendants who have a cult created don't get essence that way. They get "cult essence" which is used for cult powers. They actually lose regular essence by having a cult - there's a drain on it.

And no one is forced to train in any skill-set. Xenthos' time of 9000 lessons is quite valid. Compare it to something like guiding. Before you bring up that bashing somehow isn't work because some people enjoy it, well, some people enjoy helping novices too. The metric for learning just happens to be different for ascendants.

No... they lose essence due to having cult members. Those cult members can offer up "cult essence" which is used to power cult abilities, but it's not the same as personal essence.

Answers in bold.

Ok, then I stand corrected on cult essence. You can still gain essence in all of the same ways a person can gain experience, which still means that gaining essence is not expensive in the least.