You have played for a total of 55 days, 23 hours and 52 minutes.
And I'm at 56% of demi.

I can say from my own influencing experience that guards (at least city guards), compared to other things you can influence, just plain and utterly suck. I can gain faster xp than Jozan does from guards any day, and if I remember correctly, Romero, your bashing on Astral (at least while in a group with a good warrior or two) was still a little faster than my influencing. There's really no reason to be jealous of the xp output of guard influencing. Of the ease of it, maybe, but then, to get the most out of it, you really have to let go of most other activities within the game.

You have learnt to pk, written some stuff, done some roleplaying and levelled to Titan fairly quickly. Can't see the problem, really!

That's a pretty easy solution, since everybody has the opportunity to do it.

I'm not sure it's a smart move to use credits on influence since you're already so close to demigod. But if you have credits to burn, go for it.

QFT.

Most people in the game hate me for not doing anything for the city.

Nah guys, its like i said. I am not jealous that he has done it or is doing it at all. I am about to reach Demi just the same as you two. Its just what I was saying in the ease and risk vs reward option.

Jozan has not only beaten me as far as he has, but he has made a killing off gold/esteem for doing so. He can go near without limit on guards with paying only for bromides and doesn't have to risk death or neurosis. He has trans influence and can survive on that alone.

While I on the other hand, had to near trans Nihilism for my higher up bashing skill, trans resilience to not get crushed, trans planar to conglute, and pour gold into my health vials/scrolls/sparkleberry for cures.

And no, V, we talked about it. My bashing in a group, or solo, or in the huge group was the same rate all around. No matter what, the only difference was risk itself (3 4 5 being optimum) and you still kept up on influencing without the risk of dying or paying the gold cost I did.

As for other activities, that goes hand in hand with what I said about astral. You get highly neurotic and 1 out of 5 commands might go through successfully, stopping prime bashing or socializing as you lick small bugs and crap on yourself.

I am not saying to take it back Jozan or V, nor saying its unfair, I just think that influence rewards with guards need to be reconsidered just how astral was reconsidered.

Did you really just saying your astral bashes gave you experience the same rate as bashing alone?

Yes, ur'bashing gave me the same xp as astral bashing alone. I can darklink which is a slower rate of conjuring up the baddies, which lets me stay linked for about 4-5 links, kill everything, relink and start up again. I did the math during double xp week where I was earning about 6-8% every hour at level 95-98, regardless if it was me and Thoros, me, or the group. Ur'bashing doesn't make awesome XP solo, it just makes collective xp as a whole. This of course isn't counting deaths where you could lose 1 or 2%, or bad attempts at griefing, or the breaks where i had to quit bashing because of neurosis.

Veyrzhul was easily earning that same amount in the undervault with ills, because he and I were neck and neck for quite sometime.

You told me that bashing with Thoros only was no slower than in a larger group. I can believe that, but I don't believe that you bash as fast on your own.

As far as skills are concerned, you're right. Were I to create a new character, trans influence would be the first to get. I only got trans influencing 2.5 months after starting with the game, and started using it even later, which was a huge mistake, since I was mostly bashing alone (until the early 80s) before that, and it was, in comparison, highly ineffective.

As for the gold rewards, bashing is still better than influencing and selling esteem (at least at 5k per bottle). Just not astral bashing...

I would like to know how you did not die from 5 - 6 darklinks. What were you linking?

I starlink fesix's, probably some of the easier astral mobs, and if I accidentally starlink twice, it means I -have- to numen, and sometimes I still die.

Bulls, goats, that kind of thing. Stuff seems to track slow. So you just really wait. 3-5 is probably more accurate. But with truefavor, life karma, catacombs, I am sitting around 7k health, so I can take a beating.

I've asked this question thrice already: Has experience for influencing guards changed at all?

If you seek to nerf guard influencing, I'm fine with it if you suggest alternatives for influencers. Not everyone can influence and bash.

Perhaps if we summarise the points raised in this arguments, we can better solve the problem(s).

1. People are annoyed with influence spam at nexus
2a. The risk-reward ratio is too imbalanced for guard influencing due to protection from ganking
2b. The risk-reward ratio is too imbalanced for guard influencing due ease of influencing in general
3. Guard influencing can be sustained much longer than astral bashing
4. Bashing is superior to guard influencing in terms of gold and xp per hour
5. Influence requires less investment than bashing.

1. You could move? Or, make an area where mobs can only be influenced, and not killed, of equal or higher level. Then make guards uninfluenceable.

2a. See 1. Also, didn't Gregori mention something about preventing ganking being easy? I don't know much about this.

2b. I've raised many suggestions for influencing to be made more high risk:high reward ratio, but so far, none have been implemented. As I've mentioned before, influencing is so easy simply because there are no high level options.

3. That's true. However, is that a fair comparison? How about comparing guard influencing with other high level bashing areas.

4. I can't say anything about this. I don't bash. All I can say is, influencing in general is slow in terms of exp rate for higher levels.

5. True as well. However, those lessons invested in Influence can only be used for influencing and at most village revolts. Lessons spent in other skills (with the exception of Magic and Resilience of course) give anything from improved bashing abilities, better survival tools, more utility skills, more PK abilities and even roleplay opportunities. They even help you out with village revolts if they're not the peaced kinds.


To summarise my points: Nerf guard influencing, but please suggest alternatives if you do so.

Guard XP hasn't changed since I started in October. What changed was that guards could only be empowered or weakened (Edit: and removed the weakness to empowering). That made XPing slower by ~20%, since they used to be weak to empowering.