The idea of ascendants and such is a very cool one, do not get me wrong here. I am concerned though for Lusternia's future in regards to them. The very idea of handing someone a free lvl 100, something that in all the other IRE realms people had to work hard to get, and then a ton of extra powers on top of it is very unbalancing. As time progresses there will be more and more of them.

I feel that if your org wants to commit 1 million power to raise you up, then fine you can be ascended, but I feel you should then become separated from the playerbase much like normal divine are. You shouldn't be in the rankings (rankings are for mortals, how can you rank a divine?) and your player interactions should be more limited than they currently are. Afterall you are no longer a mortal, 1 million power went into your creation and so you are now much much more. The very RP of being an ascendant is a joke as it stands, most people seem to take it and carry on like a regular player.

So what are your guys' opinions on the ascendant system? Are my concerns valid, retarded, have an idea or opinion yourself you'd like to share? I'm interested, so speak!

I enjoy Lusternia a lot and don't want it to shoot itself in the foot like these banks are doing by perpetuating a failing system to one day explode or not be fun anymore. I'm talking distant future here.

1. What kind of "player interactions" are you talking about here? The system where ascendants were more admin-like figures that couldn't interact with players as much, certainly couldn't fight, etc., was already removed by the admin, probably with good reason. That's probably not what you meant, I'm just unsure of how to interpret it.
2. Whether or not it would have been a good idea to make ascendants less combatant-orientated (i.e demigod promotion), any retroactive change to reduce that will just piss off some of the players who got it already knowing what it was like. I certainly wouldn't mind changing this, but particularly with how domoths work, the whole system seems to have been built around it and it's not exactly fair to punish people for signing up for that.
3. The confusion over how much effort ascendant and demigod takes has been corrected a bunch of times already, but there's a seperate dodgy point here about how imbalancing ascendants are compared to demis. Answer: not much. People can complain about fearaura all they want, but you're just as imbalancing whether you spent hours afk farming guards, swarming pre-nerf astral with 20 people, or actually doing a variety of stuff for your org and being promoted because of it.

Ascendants are kind of unsatisfactory as it is, but where to start fixing it from is another matter.

The whole threshold abyss thing was supposed to peg 'Ascendants' as super players rather than 'God like beings'.

Not that I don't see where you're coming from, but the thing that you have to understand is that being a 'God' is absolutely nothing like playing the game. It's natural to think of it in terms of your player character, and in terms of it being the next step in game success, but the truth is that the admin don't play the game. Being a god is a completely different kettle of fish from playing, and on occasion, it can be very dull indeed. Ayridion did an absolutely stellar job as an IC god, but it's not something that suits every personality.

QFT. For example, just a couple weeks after raising our last, Serenwilde is already beginning the process of choosing another. The more you have, the more power you get, the faster you can get more. Being a player is becoming obsolete-- conflicts are resolved based on Ascendants.


As Shiri said, this was already tried and failed, at least the way I interpret it.


In their defense, the "RP" of an Ascendant does not exist because we don't ask for it. When we raise Ascendants, we do it specifically so they can be better at Domoths and combat. The RP abilities in Ascendancy have been deemed jokes by the people who have tried to use them, so in this, I wouldn't necessarily throw all the blame on them.


The current thinking is that if they do anything to limit the power of Ascendants, the current Ascendants will get pissy and leave. My response is: And? I'm not too sympathetic about it. For me, huge game balance issues are detrimental to the long term health of the game. If nothing is done just to keep the few happy, yes, for now IRE may rake in more money from artifacts and such, but in the long term things will get worse and worse until there is no one left. IMO it is better to fix game balance and piss people off, because while it may sting in the short run, in the long run, you'll be better off.

I don't understand this point.

Isn't roleplay playing a character? I don't immediately understand what a skillset or administrative intervention can do that a couple of well written emotes on an alias can't.

His point is that now that we know what Ascendance is, people are not really raised for roleplay. They are raised to help with Domoths and fighting-- doesn't matter if they roleplay or not. It's less about the Ascendant and more about the entire mechanics of Ascendance pushing the choice to raise someone not for roleplaying purposes but just for mechanical ones. "We need a Druid in Domoths, raise a Blacktalon. We need warriors to tank Domoth mobs, raise a Paladin." Etc.

I think what he means is that the flavour of it is really broad. Ascendants are basically demigods that maybe have a connection to the domoths, which is also really broad - it's just a place with little specialised realms for all 9 of the ...whatever you would call the things the seals represent. VAs have no connection to any one of them in particular so even if people did try roleplaying something like that, most people wouldn't even be able to tell the difference. Add to that the fact that demigods can do all the domothean stuff too, just less efficiently, and the whole thing is just really indistinct.

Cults are semi-helpful, but unfortunately they're part of orders and can only include ordermembers so that's pretty much out the window too.

EDIT: Well, ok, maybe he didn't mean that, but if I were to interpret it charitably I'd note the above anyway.

To expand on that, "The Domoths apparently have this really neat backstory, but while you've meditated upon Ascendance and mastered it by studying the Domoth energies, you've learned absolutely nothing about the Domoth Realms. Not even that there is a backstory which you might want to ask one of the Divine about."

Cults are just... too limited.

Wait, there's a backstory? I thought they were just kind of there.

So did I, but Eventru once posted how exciting the Domoth backstory was (a long time ago, now). That's the only thing any of us have heard on it, ever, that I'm aware of.

Here it is.

http://forums.lusternia.com/index.php?s=&a...st&p=555751

Restricting the number of Ascendants an org can raise would mean Ascendants aren't so cheap (in value, not cost). This is a good thing.

The only thing I disagree with is the supposed "limitations" of cults. I don't think having free reign with your cult was the aim of the administration, and rightfully so.

The only problem with restricting the number of Ascendants through some artificial means is that no one new will ever get to be an Ascendant.

There are ways of limiting things so that they aren't completely stifled. Even those who have made cults have talked about how they're struggling with the things (not in terms of upkeep, but just... what can they do? The potential pool is essentially nil).

If they're never going to be less limited, it'd probably be better to just remove the things and replace them with something that can actually be used for roleplaying purposes on an organizational level. At present, a good half of the skillset is intended for RPing with a fraction of a fraction of the organization's population (which is, itself, a fraction of the game's population). If the Ascendant is even in an Order that wants a cult. If not, half of the skillset is completely unusable.

Well, firstly it's a bit late for that now, since Seren has 5 already, and secondly this is unfair on people who start the game later. Making ascendants actually matter and then making it equivalent to a first guildleader thing or whatever is pretty harsh. Obviously I don't care about this on a personal level, but I think it's good that we didn't just limit it to 1 like Estarra originally intended. It HAS led to the value going down, but that's more to do with the rate you can gain power in this game (particularly with old domoths, which had crazy high income.)

EDIT: ninja'd by Noola


Whether or not the effects of "free reign" would have been bad, which I doubt, right now there's not a lot you can say about them...mine has been kind of sad, although that's partly because I haven't been motivated to put in a tonne of effort as well as the part of it that's the design's fault (which also feeds back into the first.)

EDIT: ninja'd by Xenthos...OTL

This is incorrect on a few levels.

1. The speed with which an org can raise another ascendant is capped by the fact that after you have all the domoths there is no more speed increase (barring the odd person coning larger amounts of power now and then) and in fact that speed can fluctuate by losing Domoths. Ascendants don't just absorb power for an org because they are ascendants. They are baby gods, not totem poles.

2. While there is a proposal for how we should select our next VA that doesn't mean we are even close to actually raising. We are merely a month away from starting nominations, two+ months from actually raising. Since the Circle in Serenwilde has been known to end up being a Circle jerk, for weeks on end for matters, I felt it prudent to post the proposal sooner rather than later so everyone could spend a few weeks agreeing to it.

3. Being a player is not obsolete. Ascendants don't actually do more than be a demigod with perks, and most of those perks don't help much. Any player can get to demigod and relatively easy given the lack of serious xp loss, the new squads and covens, the influencing xp faucet.

Edit:: Just to point out, most of Serenwilde's... in fact... I can't think of one who wasnt... VAs were almost or already a demigod when raised.

That's my misinterpretation then. I thought if the post was up, we were almost ready for another.


I have to disagree on this. From a mechanic/combat perspective, everything revolves around how many Ascendants/Demigods you have at the time. And with the game being balanced around them, it leaves anyone in the lower levels behind.

That's the point I made a while back. It isn't exponential. Beyond a certain point you can't keep "gaining" power by making ascendants. There is a max cruising speed for power intake.

Perhaps Lusternia will be the first to embrace the MMO genre's "game begins at endgame" type of leveling philosophy. I don't know if you've played some of the other IRE's, but our bashing is bar-none the easiest and most plentiful. It also punishes the least for groups now.

Then that's not an ascendant thing, that's a demigod "problem." As has been said, whether you got there by afk farming guards or actually doing something for your org has very little influence on how useful you are mechanically as long as you're at that high level instead of in your 70s. If anything you could say it's a good thing that combatants who aren't also bashers are getting a chance to have more impact, though that's not what everyone would have liked ascendance to be initially.

This same problem will occur in any group combat with level disparities. If all that are on is a bunch of level 20 - 40 people and I take my level 60 and all those low level people I will be doing a lot more than them consistently.

I would also claim that the issue has less to do with demigods and ascendants than it does with omnitrans and artifacts. Lower level people with all the toys and the knowledge to use them can take out demigods left and right. Of course, there comes a point where the lower level is to low a level, but 75 - 80 vs. demigod is easily done by people who know what they are doing. Being a demigod doesn't instantly fill you with ultimate cosmic power and the knowledge to fight. It just gives you 600 more health.