I was about to post a topic arguing that influencing should cost willpower. It's worth experience like bashing, gets you gold and karma like bashing - without any of the risk! And on top of that you can do it forever? Pretty silly.

But I thought about it a little more, and I decided that a much cleaner, fairer option would be to abolish willpower and endurance altogether. What, precisely, do they contribute to the game? I imagine that their original intent was to level the playing field between casual and hardcore players: you can't just hunt for hours on end and get level after level without ever pausing. However, this has been made completely irrelevant. First, as I already harped about, influencing doesn't cost anything. At all. Second, the moment your willpower is out you can just hop onto an aethership. By the time your aetherwill is out, your regular willpower will nearly be regenerated. This isn't always an option, as it's a matter of a crew and a ship being available, but it's not too far from what a lot of people do. I know I did it almost every day while I was in Glomdoring.

Another point I'm editing in here: the only way to regain either will or endurance is to be logged in, which further destroys the "leveling the playing field" argument. Wanna bash again? Guess what, you get to sit around doing nothing for two hours. Hope you like socializing with your braindead citymates, or reading books about made-up science, or whatever we non-coms do all day.

Another point: death costs nothing, and brings you back to full will/end. Losing .02% of a level in order to get back to hunting two hours sooner? That's an easy decision for all of us to make.

Again on the topic of aetherships, by locking into an extra energy collector, anchor, cloaking cube, etc. you can sit there and passively rack up experience without even spending aetherwill. I can't count the number of times I've locked into a collector, then gone and played xbox for three hours, then come back to happily find myself a level or two higher than I was when I left. Is it against the rules? I guess. More often than not people aren't completely afk (I'm an extreme example), but they are screwing around in other windows, making sandwiches on the other side of the room, or whatever. The point is, it's possible, and we all do it.

I'm pretty sure that all the PvP abilities that drain either by a significant amount (oldschool psyvamp, anyone) have been nerfed into irrelevance by this point, and neither is really a factor in combat. If I'm wrong, please inform me.

All that willpower and endurance do is punish those who gain levels the ol' fashioned way - that is, people with less resources, who can't afford a flashy aethership (though all the orgs have them now), or can't pony up the lessons to pump influence along with more useful abilities. Or maybe they just prefer to kill things than talk to them. Bashers already have enough to deal with, with the way enemy status works making them ripe targets for ganking unless they restrict themselves to only hunting in on-prime, non-enemying areas. Why should I have to hunt tunnel trash till level 100, and still have a harder time getting there than the influencer comfy-cozy knitting at their nexus while chatting up the guards? Either overhaul how they work so that they're not so meaningless, or throw them out. They're just a couple of relics from IRE-past.

Endurance limits shouting. I think we can all agree that's a good thing.

I've lost a battle due to willpower drain. I've won a few battles due to endurance drain.

Yes, but should people with more endurance get more shouts? I say, give everyone one shout per hour, two if they're a demi (because if I were a demi I'd want to show off my obnoxious custom shout as much as possible).

Carried on winds of stinking flatulence, Azoth's voice screeches through your mind...

If I recall correctly, it drains 25% of your maximum Endurance per shout, rather than a set number. Also, I'm fairly certain I've never run out of willpower bashing, and the last time any of my characters ran out of endurance was a 30ish warrior.

Most of the time this is actually a bad thing though, like old BS spiritsinger tiredness etc.

Yeah, but it wasn't my only tactic, it was a side effect. Spiritsinger tiredness was their primary tactic as I understand it.

Clearing out two kephera hives (about 80-100 corpses) takes me nearly into the red. After that, a couple elemental planes and I'll be all dried up. That's with 23,000ish willpower, when I was a level 91 shadowcaster, and scoring a lot more criticals than the 70-80s who often bash there, therefore costing me less willpower. I guess it's not a factor at unless you go on hardcore hunting sprees... but why should it be a factor at all?

I'm not sure if that makes it worse or just as bad but it certainly doesn't make it any better.

Are you still drunk from the meet? Think of it like a possible check to make sure that fights don't go on forever.

Except only certain classes have access to this "check" - and if a fight is going on forever, either party can simply leave. Unless you're fighting for the Seal of War, I suppose, but in that case Estarra ought to just flip a coin.

I brought water. HA.

It's a "possible" check to make sure that fights don't go on forever, that only one side has (or that one side has far better than the other side), that contradicts the "everything is curable" design of the system, and - when it's not the main goal - happens incidentally as a result of doing your other stuff, as opposed to spiritsingers who had to actually intentionally whore it out. So it's either just as bad, or worse, for being not the main focus.

What the heck is your discipline at?

Also, there are a lot of artifacts to enhance the regeneration rate of willpower and some for endurance, but I know that trans Resilience (resilience buffs endurance recovery, discipline boosts willpower recovery) means I can hunt forever without running out.

However, if you're bashing things that cause lots of bleed, you're going to have to consider priorities.

Master. What's your poi-

Ahahaha I see. Touche!

New idea: add a stat that starts at 31 and goes down by 1 every day you play unless you send in $14 at the beginning of the month. That's how WoW does it and it's a lot easier to understand.

You know, there is absolutely nobody stopping you from paying $10 a month to Lusternia for a credit package, with which you could (eventually) buy all the stuff you complain about not having. And it is cheaper than $14 a month.

The difference is that you don't have to pay anything if you don't want to. Heck, pay $30 a month if you want! Or $200! or $500! Completely up to you.

Yes, but then I wouldn't be able to look in the mirror without hating myself, you see. Paying for access to a service is one thing; paying for objects that do not exist is another.

Hey guys let's get back on-topic.

Check, Azoth isn't able to hog all the bashing areas because he runs out of willpower. Willpower 1, Azoth 0.

Willpower also prevents other things, like people endlessly spamming the system with motes/tarot cards/etc.

Consider it paying for access to a happier and healthier life.

Motes cost power. As for tarot/runes, no matter how many of those you make you'll be removing a greater number of objects than you're creating, in terms of cards/tinctures and runestones/tinctures.


Uh-huh. Except I could spend that money on real things instead of fake things. Real things make me happier than fake things (laaadies)