Okay! Stealing quotes from LoR5, assuming they don't get moved for me.

Summary: Domoths are too important. Specifically, their power output is way too ridiculous, at least from the perspective of a handful of demigods. How can we not make domoths a huge pain, besides doing something about their power output?

New stuff.



This sounds fine, and is at least a nudge towards having more personal impact and less organizational.



There are at least two ways to fix this.

One that was previously suggested was that a race blessed will only be affected if they belong to the organization of the one who controls said domoth. This will have the side effect of making even this stage of the domoths critical to control and will keep the pressure up to control them. It also keeps domoths as a whole more something that is an organizational struggle than a personal one (which is not something I want, but might well be what most everyone else wants). Even if this fix is made, however, I don't think we'll see a wide diversity of races being considered. People are still going to favour races that have the greatest populace in their given org, since it is an org thing and not a personal thing, which means that spec races will still be highly favoured, with the possible exception for humans every now and then.

A different solution would be to simply limit how many domoth blessings a race can stand to bear. Let's say two for the sake of argument. Anymore than that would cause some sort of disturbing instability. The only problem I foresee with this is that explaining it ICly or making it happen IC might be awkward since we've gotten along just fine with having super race concentrations up until now.



Absolving would be a lot better if anyone could get involved with it. I think part of the massive imbalance with absolving is that you can gather up everyone in your org to fight their hearts out to win a domoth, only to have a couple of demigods tear apart the work when no other opposing demis are around to do anything about it, or maybe just one or two. Making absolving work like stage 2 could help immensely, and also make absolving at least a bit more difficult and require a lot more planning and effort.

In addition, it might be nice to tone down domoths a little if power is removed entirely, at least for the sceptre. Make it so that pretty much any demigod could conceivably complete each stage of the sceptre alone for every domoth, so they can be pursued individually and fought over individually. (I think most of them are already like this, but stage 1 is a bit crazy for beauty and harmony for some archetypes to try alone) Everything from there on up that can benefit a guild or an entire organization should require the expanded fighting forces.

One final thought - as an extra addition to support providing more personal benefit and less organizational benefit with the domoths, why not let the blessings bestowed by the domoth controller affect them no matter what? Like you can bless furrikin but still enjoy the blessing without being a furrikin yourself, by virtue of the fact that the power is coursing through your effort with that domoth.

Discuss.

The mobs need to have some of their buffs removed in order to allow for them to be challenged by individuals, really.

I kind of like the "let the domoth holder benefit" idea if nothing else. Then again, that just makes everyone choose elfen/viscanti/merian/faeling even more since there's no chance of them blessing their own race.

I don't think that absolve fix would help though.

Yeah the mobs were ninja-buffed I guess after some admin noticed that we were having a too-easy of a time with them.

It's definitely the power that makes it so important to the point that VA decisions are based almost entirely on them. While I personally don't mind, seems a lot of others do.

The passive essence gain on lower 'levels' sounds nice.

Letting people absolve only when the 'owner' is around seems to be an improvement, though it might only encourage the owner to be around for brief moments of time. Absolving as a mechanic is probably the second most broken thing about Domoths.

Eh. That's more an RP issue than anything else, though people who stick around long enough to become demigods or are able to garner the support needed for ascension are virtually guaranteed to have militant nationalistic tendencies, so I can see that. Limiting how many blessings a race can bear would circumvent this, but not without causing its own problems (and then people can always just load blessings on kephera/illithoid instead, since they know very few if any of the people they will be fighting will have these races with them).



Oh, fun. I guess I'll get to experience the ninja buffs first hand in the next couple of days.

Absolving looks tricky to mess with all around, and I agree my originally stated solution might not help all that much. But it would at least be something. It's pretty stupid to say, "Okay guys, we can let you come along and help us claim these things, but if you hear about RivalOrg's demigods coming to absolve it while we're gone and none of our own are around at all, sorry, you're SOL". At least give them a chance to try something, anything, especially if domoths are going to stay so heavily org centric. If we're going to drift away from being so heavily org centric, then this won't be nearly such a stickler.

Instead of preventing a domoth from being absolved at all, why not still cause some sort of penalty for absolving when they aren't in the realms? Increase the time needed to stand around, or increase the mob spawn rate unless said "owner" signs on. It would still be dodgy and promote some odd log-in/log-off patterns, but it wouldn't be a complete shut out.

Domoths are retarded. No one but warriors have a chance at most of the domoths because the mobs are ridiculous (see: Champions, sirens, spheres, kings, etc). The Domoths are NOT optional, they are MUST HAVE because of the insane power input. Also, Ascendancy is geared towards warriors only not just because of Domoths, but also because of skills like Aegis where it's most beneficial to have the tankiest race/class combo ever so no one dies. So the fun things about Demigod/Ascendance aren't fun if you are not a warrior. High-end Lusternia has slowly turned over the years into Warrior-only territory, and it's depressing.

To go more into detail about domoths specifically:

The mobs need to be drastically nerfed. Stop giving them obscenely synergetic afflictions (for instance: Champions room trample and blackout, making classes like monks absolutely useless).

Absolving needs to be just as difficult as claiming. 2 hours (or so) of work can be destroyed in 30min... 15 if it's a seal-bearer. This is wrong, and the mechanic makes it so that absolvers can just hum-diddly go and absolve when no one's around.

The power rewards need to go. You stated that Domoths are strictly optional. If so, don't give them such an incentive that there's enormous pressure to do them as a requirement for your org. Alot of demigods (Thoros is one example) are severely burnt out because, and I quote: "I feel obligated and responsible to do Domoths, because if I don't I'm letting the city down and it sucks". Putting such vast pressure on the players is a BAD thing, and you cannot say with a straight face that you aren't when the rewards are: 500/750/1000 power per domoth, race/guild/city benefits. There's just absolutely NO possible way that such a thing is "optional"

I agree that domoths are much easier for warriors than everyone else, but you can actually do non-war things if you have an SF, just so you know.

And aegis is the only thing in ascendance which benefits warriors a lot more, everything else is equally useless for everyone (except affinity, which druids would appreciate more.)

EDIT: P.S the power rewards don't need to go entirely, but they could stand to be dropped to like...125/250/500, maybe?

I absolutely agree with this statement. I've felt immense pressure to maintain domoths (chaining the horrible war throne over and over for a time) due to the power output. It's beneficial to your home org and so of course, it becomes necessary. I've never found it 'fun'. It's tedious. I miss old Lusternia. I think Estarra and others fool themselves into believing that somehow, things like nexus constructs, wildnodes or domoths provide optional conflict. The only worthwhile or meaningful conflict should be focused on village revolts, player/divine incited wars and events. In order for the former items to be optional, soften the benefits. They should have been cosmetic at best. Some rp-worthy things. Minor perks. But what we have now is a bit silly.

As far as absolving goes, I don't think it should be harder. Claiming them is already a pain. And the burn out is inevitable.

Fix champions.

It's like an arms race. Anything that gives you an advantage of any sort is not optional because if the other side has it and you don't, the other side is going to beat you like a dead horse with it untill you cave in and get it yourself.

Blackout sucks. No matter what gives it.

Harmony spheres make baby Jesus cry.

Champions are worse, to me.

Well, I'm glad other people are coming around to the concept of the power rewards being ridiculous. I said it when Celest dominated and said it when Magnagora dominated. Thing is, first we're saying there isn't enough conflict and now we say that there's too much because this stuff isn't optional. Malicia's agreeing with Revan, which I'm pretty sure was written down somewhere in Revelations as one of the Signs, except that Estarra's gonna go schizophrenic like Morgfyre playing Devil's Advocate. Having to unify two playerbases looking for entirely separate things from their conflict can't be fun, and we're seeing the failure inherent in the system when people stop trying for domoths even when they have plenty of Demis. So- what is to be done?

http://forums.lusternia.com/index.php?s=&a...st&p=490270

Quite a few people were making comments when it was introduced, and I've yet to see anyone in recent discussions who thinks the power reward's acceptable. This is... what, the third or fourth discussion in the last two months? All of them saying the same thing, generally. Though it does seem to be tilting more and more towards "just remove the bloody power."

Yeah, this may be rants, but if I were an Admin, I'd think all the players were bipolar, and after weeping at the keys for a few minutes, I'd go looking for a drink.

People want conflict, so they make conflict. They portion it off in these little domoth things, where semi and non combatants are never going to get accidently caught in the middle. They add rewards that make the combatants feel special, or a sense of accomplishment, or whatever else.

And the prime people they're targetted at say, "Appreciate it, but no."

As much as I like all those pretty domoth blessings, I think they should go- I think the demis or whoever else should certainly get the blessings, maybe even better ones. But giving all this power and these blessings to the city or commune puts a lot of pressure on some of our most dedicated and essential players that doesn't need to be there.

I mean, I would really, really, really, miss the Map of the Dead, for example, but the map itself makes people say stuff like "When is Shuyin going to get our map back?" Meaning "When is Shuyin going to organize our demis and others and have a drawn out stint of combat against tough monsters so that I can turn in rockeaters to southgard for some reason?"

So, lose 'em! And the power thing. Instead, make it so there's some personal artifact of some sort for each domoth that the holder can make use of while they hold it. Something worth fighting over, but not something that's going to convey benefit to the organization as a whole.

Just a question: But this is intended to be (or appears to be, at least) a thread with constructive criticism about the rewards/challenge of the Domoths. Any particular reason it's in Idiots instead of General?

Aside from the pressure on the Demi characters, I like the idea of the Domoths. Not being Titan/Demi and not being able to participate, I do like how it lets those who want conflict get it away from the rest of us, though I do feel bad that they feel pressured into it. I dare say though, that they put that pressure on themselves a little bit, and they knew that going into Acendancy as well.

I've put it in ideas rather than general to encourage the constructive criticism aspect.

Works for me. Thanks!

Morgfyre writes off a keyboard a month with that heady mix of salty tears and spilt beer.

We don't think you're bipolar: one of the unwritten rules of the forum is people are very loud when they have something to complain about, and not so loud when they don't. This gives an exaggerated distortion of player opinion at any one time. This thread doesn't really qualify as a good example - I don't think it's the conflict which is unwelcome, but (reading the posts) the compulsory tedium of it. Nevertheless, you can look back over the idiots subforum like a geologist at a cliff face and there's a fairly palpable pendulum swing of forum opinion from "I'm burning out, there's too much conflict" to "I'm bored, there's not enough conflict" over the years. That may be because we can never get the balance quite right between them, but I also think it has a lot to do with greener grass, and that the loud unhappy players at any one time overshadow the quiet less unhappy faction.

It is, but in this specific case, it's been a pretty consistent (and, from what I've seen, nearly everyone who is involved in the Domoth aspect of the Domoths has spoken up about it: Sojiro, Nejii, Vathael, Thoros, Karnagan, Malarious, Kaervas, Ragniliff, Hyrtakos, Catarin, Malicia, myself...). I don't believe that this constitutes a minority of the active Demigods/Ascendants who are active in the thing at present. The only ones I can really think of who are active and haven't spoken about it are Xiel, Rika, Nydekion, Exeryte, and the lone voice speaking in favour is Desitrus (who is working on his first try right now) and thinks that "If all reasons for doing it are erased, nobody will do them".

The power rewards do make it an extremely org-central thing, because they are quite large-- a single scepter is equivalent to winning a Prestige competition. At the same time, the mobs have been buffed which means that there needs to be more people (either on the offense or the defense) to deal with them in both the first and second stages. The third stage is... pretty nasty with some of these buffed mobs, now (such as the sirens). At the same time, there are other reasons for doing it beyond the power. The blessings are nice, it would be possible to add in some small amount of personal essence to the scepter and orb (2500, 5000 perhaps), maybe even reduce the crown to 10,000 so it goes up in a nice progressive order). Move it away from an organization focus to more of an individual one.

Edit: And you've edited in an agreement with the first paragraph. *coughs* Well, I'll just leave it anyways since I think it's still a valid point.