1-2) Agreed. Spread the love. Not much else to say about that.
3) This is not just a problem with Ascendants. People expect everyone to defend every attack, hold every meld, raise every smob, gather every essence, keep up every construct. In this game, anything you have the ability to do you are required to do by the people around you. It's not a mechanical problem that can easily be fixed, if at all.

I think it's hysterical though when Shuyin doens't get the map and Celest starts whining .



I would like to see this be the focus of Ascendants. You are right, pretty much the only reason a VA is raised is because the org wants the OP combatant. Less focus on combat skillsets and more focus on RP is where I think VAs should be placed.

As a note, there isn't really a combat skillset (or you'd see more combatant Demigods being raised to get access to it).

Non-Demigods are raised so that they can get the Demigod bonuses.

Here's the truth of it. If Ascendance didn't have the the combat skills (plus demigod), no one would pay 1 million power to give them extra RP skills.

This is completely untrue. Many players that were around from the start have waited for Vernal Ascendants under the assumption that they would be RP based and knowing they would cost a lot of power to raise. People were more than happy to raise Vernals without combat skills.

Edit:: In fact many believed that Vernals would cost upwards of 5 million power a piece to raise and still were anxiously awaiting the day they could raise them.

Nejii, Malicia, and myself were raised without anybody knowing much of anything about the skillset.

From my point of view, that's just fine.

What I think would fix all of this is if the process of claiming a domoth had something to do with the domoth, instead of being a dull grindfest with a small chance of bloodbath. If the only way to hold the War domoth had something to do with being good at War, then there'd be a reason to raise someone who was good at War, sure. That's how it is now. If the only way to hold the Knowledge domoth had something to do with being good at Knowledge, there'd be reason to raise someone who was good at Knowledge... and holding it would have to do with Knowledge... and suddenly, there'd be roleplay significance to domoths, and to Vernal Ascendants, and to the choice of who they should be, and the process wouldn't be terrible.

So the trick is figuring out a way to do that... and to do so without expecting the admins to spend more time on it than they do now. So a quiz is not an option. And that's what it call comes down to. We can make it easy for domoth claiming to depend on the grindwork of bashing and combat because those are infinitely codeable. They could easily have made one of them depend on the grind of influencing if they'd wanted -- that's also codeable -- but they didn't. Even if they had, though, that wouldn't change much. The farther from Death and War you get, the harder it is. I don't think it's possible.

Gregori covered a lot of it. While the idea of deleting vernal ascendants is retarded and not in any way a good idea even disregarding the "not going to happen" thing, there IS a case to be made that, like demigod, the amount of people with it dilutes the effect. Unfortunately even if there was a good solution to this once (and capping the number permanently is not it) it's a bit late now, and we have a bunch of fighters with it who probably wouldn't appreciate it being turned into a limited edition no-combat role or whatever as per the original design.

It's also kind of awkward that ascendants are expected to bash more than demis, when they got there through (ideally) being a character rather than bashing, but compared to the skill quality of ascendance and the fact raising combatants to demi with it is so highly encouraged (though 3 of our 4 have been Regents, guild leaders and so on at or close to demi) that's not so much of an issue.

What does this mysterious Ascendence skillset let you do anyways?

I can fly!

You can already fly.

I know! Isn't it great?

I can moonburst as a druid! It's called destruction and it costs me 25 - 200 essence a burst, but I can do it!

Edit:: really this is a skill I like, don't read this as me insulting the skillset by it.

Yay!

Oh, wait. I have low int as a warrior.

Seriously, though:
http://xieltalnara.googlepages.com/ascendance

And Sarrasri, I see you reading. Do you have any comments?

I see her posting, she has comments!

Holy crap that page has a lot of information...

Not much more than what's already been mentioned. Ascendance skillset is really lackluster except for a few things, cult abilities are alright, some better than others. I actually think the group cult skills (divine supper, presence, and glory) are probably the least useful, since cults generally are small and not easy to gather. There's also not much use for them when you think they'd be useful. Maybe presence in a revolt. Maybe. Also, the need to bash so much for such a lackluster skillset is really draining. I'm about 35% away from trans and I've pretty much burnt out and am taking a break.

Domoths are boring, I keep claiming for the free essence at crowns. They were more exciting when there was fighting for them. The power is nifty since it lets me keep my ration at unlimited essentially. *cough* Other than that, some blessings are better than others, really could deal with some equality there, just not sure how. More personal benefit would be great too. Easiest one to get is the race blessing, but as Gregori mentioned, don't put it on your race org and you get to deal with those of that race complaining to you.

Why thank you.

Ascendance is just...full of flavour skills. A lot of them aren't all that interesting and there's still some issues being raised about cults. It's basically Demigod with an extra essence sink and Aegis (which is a really nice skill *cough*)

Domoths, lately, are total afk-fests. There's nobody to fight anymore. I've been thinking about it for awhile now, but the fact that it takes place on Aetherbubbles often makes people not want to bother. You have to deal with flashpoints (and their resetting), a commander who can fuse, a whistle so you can easily return ships home (and even then you'd want a Demigod for tess). Without Xiel/Viynain commanding just about all of our Domoth ships, I dunno what we'd do.

You stand on a bubble, for an hour straight, going afk and turning on your bashing triggers to autoattack anything that the sceptre/crown/orb spawns. You have to do this several times a week for several domoths, and once you've had enough you'll be mentally subbing "(Serenwilde Elite Guard): Shuyin says, "Need help with Death."" with "(Serenwilde Elite Guard): Shuyin says, "Who needs a convenient afk spot with gold/xp perks?""

Oh yeah, then the Ascendant in question spends 30+ mins more solobashing in the Domoth Realms. :/

The only blessings of major importance to most people are Sceptre (Race) because it impacts them the most. Yes, Wild Elfen who can't stand being without 20 CHA, I'm looking at you. The only stuff most other people direly want are the Death Map.