Okay, that's a valid point. It reminds me why I did it in the first place -- to avoid ganking. Thanks Casilu.

The whole security issue is a bit stretched too.. You can fairly easy (especially if going to the trouble of getting demi) pick up spectacles, then you just enemy the gankers, and leave when they show up on your spectacles.

Bashing or influencing, ganking is easy to avoid if you use some sense.

That's a good point too, Gregori.

Although, it is a tad easier to passively wait for the archons to gank your opponent instead, so you can offer their corpse to the shrine in the same room.

Ok, I just want to know one thing: Has the exp gain for empowering guards ever been buffed?

Because, I've been influencing guards ever since I could, which would be about 2 years ago. It isn't as insanely fast as you think, nor is the exp gain that good.

If you don't want nexus spam, then don't stand there? If I wanted somewhere to stand, I'd either climb up at Master Ravenwood, or be at the dark root. Even before influencing guards became popular, there was already so much spam there.

I too usually avoid influencing guards at Prime Nexus. Only if there is no one there, or I really don't feel like doing anything else do I empower guards at Master Ravenwood.

As for the security issue...I don't deny that. I hate it when I'm in Tosha monastery, and some random person just debates me while I'm influencing. And hate the fact that they don't get any status or whatever, while either I get burntout or lose exp. So yes, I do influence guards more when I'm annoyed by these people.

EDIT:

Ok, I've just came back from a hiatus, and haven't used divert in awhile, so I acknowledge this point.


The thing is, your friend would be standing around doing nothing while he watch you influence. Would you do it? Would anyone do it?


Because, as I've mentioned, there are guards only in a few rooms. And with regards to cave-fishers, don't they move about? Guards don't. As for the diverter plan, acknowledged, although not everyone is willing to fly back to nexus just to divert some mobs for other people.


Because it was in conjunction with a suggestion to allow a group to influence one mob. Also, it was more interesting than just a straight boost in toughness.

Not every city is doing it to the level you seem to have, Jozan. And no, I am not saying it in a bad way to accuse you of doing something bad, you have systematically worked the system thats in place and gained huge rewards off of it legitimately. Just like people gripe at ur'bashes, I think its fair to gripe about this level of influencing.

3.5 months from 1- to Demi, with the guy not knowing what he was doing the first month.

I have taken, about 6 months from 1- Titan with me not knowing the first month or two.

To effectively ur'bash you have to be at least level 75 first, have putrefaction in necromancy or trans resilience, trans planar (if you don't intend to pray), you will need health refills, sparkleberry, health scrolls and cures dependent on which sphere you are bashing. You will get ganked, attacked, and flooded. You will die time and time again at times to failed linkers, starting back at the XP you began with and will be kicked off astral quite a few times if a big enough group forms out of envy for your bash.

Influencing takes bromides and trans influence. You face no risk, walk into no enemy territory, stand at your nexus off prime. And run virtually no risk and its -faster- than astral bashing with no negatives. Not to mention that you are stacking esteem to sell at vast levels for 5-8k a bottle easily.

Now of course, astral lets you work in a group but that doesn't necessarily decrease the risk, it in fact makes it worse as you begin to take 1k damage from some mobs to 2k from mobs at larger groups. Mobs that will tank world shattering criticals.

Recapped
Astral
Level 75
Trans Planar
Trans Resilience or putrefaction
Vacuum for gold with no source of profit due to cures/heals
Neurosis which kicks in and ruins the game for combat/sparring/socializing to the point you can do nothing else.
Death from super creatures, gank squads, and envious people who rather fail then form their own group.
Limited amount once the nodes are drained.

Influence guards
No real level starter
Trans influence
Huge profit
Bromides big deal
No risk
A run through cosmic/ethereal guards, city guards might take an hour, -maybe- you might leave the city for the sake of abit more xp from something else.

Like I said, no real problem with people influencing or any of that. And its no envy on my part as I am about to reach Demigod anyway. But I like risk/reward to make sense. And Jozan (no offense again since I don't really know you) has faced -no- risk at all whatsoever and has earned far more levels off standing at the nexus idling with influence on and in faster time then I ever earned astral bashing.

If things stay as they are without a nerf, I suspect ur'influencing to crop up.

One of the worst things about astral flooding really is the group thing. It makes it so much less tiresome (you would think this would be a good thing in the abstract but compared to other kinds of bashing and with the ability to harrass people when they're trying it...) and rather than one person bashing to demi, multiple people are. And on any given day when you weren't interrupted (which, granted, happened about every time we tried) you got absolutely ridiculous amounts. So I don't think the two are comparable.
I should also note that Lanfayr got demi at a similar pace to Jozan and I'm not sure if she spent as many hours per day on it as he has (she'd have to volunteer that info for comparison I guess.)

That said, I find it highly amusing that someone seems to have convinced Seren to hire 30 guards in Shanthmark purely for this reason.

Romero: I don't take it personally. I'll reiterate that it's a very easy method of reaping huge rewards with very little risk. However, this is a problem that isn't just unique to me or Celest, but to the entire game.

As you've already pointed out, the biggest problem I see is that guards take no effort at all. With astral mobs, you have to worry about constant death on the horizon. You don't even have to worry about finding the mobs to influence either -- they're ducks lined up all in a row.

I don't have a solution on hand, but it seems unfair for me to 'nerf' guard influencing after I've whored it to demigod. I'll leave that to other people and recuse myself.

Are we talking about only guard influencing, or influencing in general? I'd just like to point out that general influencing (Tosha, etc.) has already bee fairly nerfed (longer time for mobs to be laidback.)

Still, influencing is incredibly easy. It destroys my the esteem market. Compared to bashing, the risks are tame. This is just regular influencing. What more for guard influencing?

tl;dr: nerf, but not too much.

This complaint is stemming from guard influencing. Influencing in general would take FOREVER to get to demigod.

To clarify, since guard influencing is far superior to general influencing and the risks are even smaller...there's a huge disconnect between regular influencing and guard influencing.

What's your played time again? From the time I've seen you online influencing, it may only be 3 months, but I'd wager you've put in quite a bit more time per day than most people know.

You have played for a total of 54 days, 14 hours and 22 minutes.

That's just under two months actual playing time so Romero would have to be bashing around 8 hours a day (and not dying to PK at all) for that to really measure up. I don't think there's much worth comparing it though.

To measure up from an ur'basher...

You have played for a total of 68 days, 5 hours and 4 minutes.

And Jozan is ahead of me.

And there is no way I bash 8 hours a day, and I always die not just to PK but to astral bash as well or just noobing it up.

Yea, it does take a lot of time each day to pull it off. Not to mention that when I did it, there was little competition. Now the competition is fierce.

Yeah, so if you didn't bash that much, your playtime isn't worth much since we're talking about raw time value bashing/influencing rather than proportions or whatever. So the fact he's ahead of you doesn't say a lot. All the dying gets in the way of the statistics too. A by-hour comparison as compared to old astral flooding might be better (although then it's still only 1 person to help compensate for those other advantages it has.)

I can get about 0.35% XP (as Titan) per hour influencing guards.


Although, I'm XPing slower now that we dismissed all the Prime guards.

That's actually pretty slow - you need to get those prime guards back! I used to make 5% in an average day bashing, and that was mostly solo (next to no Astral.)

I've always wanted to see influencing skills for Orders. It would be similar to an empowering influence type, but it would be only for orders. You'd get three influencing skills, each one given at a certain rank.

AB INFLUENCE INITIATION

You can influence the many types of denizens found around the basin with the teachings of your order. This will grant a certain amount of essence to the Divine, depending on the mental strength of the denizen.

Just an idea, but it would make Orders more of a mainstream idea instead of just something to do on the side.

The deal though is the amount of risk and reward put in where he has no risk and near equal reward. I also invest more in terms of cures/skills.

Eh, it won't matter though. I will trans influence and do the same. Heh.

It is most definitely slower than bashing in terms of XP/hour. If that's the metric, than bashing is still faster.

It takes less effort to influence though and I can influence for longer periods of time than a basher. Maybe that's the X-factor?