This very same thing was said 4 years ago, and 3 years ago, and 2 years ago, and demigod gets easier to get each year, and more people want it easier yet. Making it harder to get won't change the feeling of inadequacy and people having to strive to compete. All you will do is frustrate the people who have been trying, albeit not very hard, to get there by making things more difficult because you don't like so many demigods, and while this may not invalidate your argument it does alter the perspective by the fact that you rarely play the game anymore and so all you end up doing is making things harder for people who do play the game.

*ponder* Well, you're disproving my point, but I know you supported having the cost for raising Ascendants rise!

Demigod may be "easier" to get, but that's a relative concept. It's still a very time consuming process. It's also become a damn near entrance requirement for combat. Ask Desitrus. He will tell you how much of a -major- impact it had for him as a warrior.

I do agree to raising the cost of each successive Ascendant. I don't agree to limiting the amount of Ascendants an org can hold, nor in making it harder to reach demigod once more.

Pretty tough to disagree. It had a major impact for me as well, and I'm not even anywhere near top-tier.

Try being a Shadowlord with strength as it currently is and not being a Demigod. Without the +2 weighting AND the +3 from size bonus, it's nasty. Still kinda rough even with those. :/

It's all about specialization. I bet you'd had/have a much easier time as a Bonecrusher/Axelord.

Definitely with Bonecrusher, yes. Speed & good low-wounding affs have always been best-suited for Shadowlord. Night would help, too, but still-- that's a very narrow selection.

Yeah, so, how's Crow working out for you these days?

And super choke. It's amazing for warriors now.

Yep.

Please don't dis my crow, Xavius.

Not sure why how much I log in has any affect on this apparent problem Gregori. That really has no relevance at all here considering I've played this game more than most people still floating around, and that I also for the past few weeks have started playing again. If you're going to argue on this thread why don't you stay with the issue at hand and not start bringing up stupid things like that that dont support anything.

I have always agreed about the demigod problem, even before I became one. I made this thread in the hopes of gathering player input and that perhaps a Divine or Estarra might see it as well because it most definitely is a serious issue to consider. I'm very sick of people claiming I want demigod harder to reach because I am one and don't want anymore because that's total bull and not true. The fact of the matter is demigod has been made a lot easier to get what with the lessening of essence/xp loss upon death and these recent influencing changes that enable people to go afk in their city and achieve it.

Personally I don't know what could be done except to maybe revert back to losing more when you die/pray, although that would throw ascendants out of whack since they cant lose it. I dont know!

I think it'd be an interesting discussion to determine which is worse for warriors: Crow, Stag, or Sacraments.

Hey, at least Crow's up to the point where it's not an easy call, eh?

I don't know much about sacraments, but I can say I would take Crow right now over Stag as a druid just for the mana kill.

Druids and Warriors are slightly different.

I'd probably rate it Sacraments < Crow < Stag for warriors. Facepaints are slightly better in more situations, extra healing, stagtotem vs. nestcall, etc.

The domoth realms do have a story, as I'd said forever ago. Now mind, everyone in the world may think it's droll, as I tend to drool over anything remotely Lusternia related. Believe me, when Estarra opens up her little book and lets out a page or three and I'm there to catch it, I'm like a sponge. Even she gets annoyed when I can pull, out of the air, ideas from 2-3 years ago that were mentioned in passing somewhere and I caught wind. She could talk about why mortals have digestive systems and produce faeces, and I'd be so enthralled Fain could poke me with a stick for an hour and I'd probably not react.

That said - we aren't closed to ideas for Ascendants/Ascendancy, as far as I am aware! We rarely are. If you want more Ascendance skills in the Skillset, we aren't closed to that either, as far as I'm aware. Though I think if we do add more, we want more RP-oriented skills, than combat ones.

And remember, in the past (can't speak entirely for the future - I left my tarot cards and crystal ball at home!) we've generally shot down ideas involving custom entrance/exit messages and custom looktexts, because these are considered reserved entirely for god characters of the administration.

And yes, as my memory serves, we'd once considered allowing Vernal Ascendants to actually be Vernal Gods, who would serve as Roleplay Gods - god characters who's players did not have administrative duties. Unfortunately, it was felt that this was simply way too difficult and demanding upon the players who took up these roles - as Fain said, being an administrator isn't like being a player. There's been a few occasions that I've watched with envy as players are doing things I can't anymore - even the monotonous yet strangely relieving task of bashing is excluded from us. Trust Fain and I when we say, it takes a VERY special sort of person to take up the mantle of an administrator. It's definitely not for everyone! Holding that out as a 'reward' seems almost cruel, now that I wield the bittersweet joys of hindsight - there's just no way to know what you're getting yourself into. I certainly didn't, before I was here for quite some time.

Like I said, though! If you guys have suggestions, bring them out, let them roll! Keep it positive, and we are looking!

Ideas like increasing costs with the # of existing vernals of an org are good ones - as are any really cool ideas for Ascendance!

I give my customary disclaimer that my ADD kicked in halfway through writing this, so apologies if it seems hugely disjointed. Ahem.

Edit: Wow! That post was much bigger than I intended! Jeez, you'd have thought it was one of Eventru's entrance lines...

And maybe nerfing Demigods? Or should we make a new thread?

Why is there this "nerf demigods" theme?

If the isue is because you can't kill a demigod then I have news for you if you can't kill a demigod you wouldn't be killing a nerfed demigod. Most of the demigods involved in fighting were fighters first, demigod second.

If the issue is there are to many demigods and you can't get to demigod yourself then there is no reason to nerf them just because you can't/don't take advantage of the myriad of ways there are to attain it yourself.

Take for example Aiyana, your average highschool player. She has school during the day, RL events after which, and spends about 1 - 2 hours a day that she is on bashing or influencing. Including deaths she makes a steady progress towards demigod. Why is this? Because she takes advantage of the mechanics that Lusternia has offered to do this; squads/covens, group bashing in general, astral bashing, aether bubble bashing, heck she even learned influencing up to charismatic smile, possibly a little higher, and the first few skills of dramatics so when she can't get into squads/covens she can putter about influencing guards.

The ability to get there is there for everyone, and it is not hard to do so. It just requires a bit of effort on your part.

I'd personally feel a little vindicated if VA's were taken out of the XP rankings. I think it completely undermines the ranking system, they're on a different level than players.

As far as addressing the demigod issue, it couldn't be too hard to revert back to the older xp/essence loss system could it? Demigod was definitely supposed to be something hard to maintain (at least that used to be the general consensus) so this would help enforce that and it would also act as a deterrant for Demi's to enter battles at random, since there would be more on the line to lose. What's more, most of the combatant demigods are already way up in essence so they certainly couldn't complain.

I wouldn't care if VA's were removed from rankings, though I would prefer they got their own ranking system instead of just removed completely.