Seal of approval.

I think my points are still valid, though admittedly it is limited to my view as a demi bashing for essence. If I had to choose between astral and aspace for raw essence gain as a faeling, I'd pick aspace every chance I could get. However, aspace experience is curved based on level, so it's going to be different going down the spectrum from where I'm at.

You would, but the point is that you can choose to astralbash much more frequently than you can choose to abash (given that you can go to astral by yourself or with 1-2 friends, but it takes a minimum of 6 for an abash. Much more than that if you actually want a successful abash that lasts a while)

Reducing the rewards further reduces the pool of people interested and makes it that much more difficult to get up there... ... for a reduced reward, which just brings the question to mind of "why bother?"

I didn't intentionally pick mostly Gloms, but... yeah.

Oh, and Night Penumbra is retroactive

I dunno, if you're willing to put the time in (and delete your life for a while), more power to you.

P.S. Delete divinefire while we're digressing.

Talan got Demi pre-abashing. And Sidd got Demi way way before abashing... one of the youngest VAs ever, heh. Nyir was also pre-abashing.

Narynth, on the other hand, got Demi on the double-exp-week.

(I'm aware this was not your point, but I feel that it needs to be clarified for others who might try to associate this with abashing)

Agree.

Only if you are a human, in which case it is silly for you to get the extra benefit in a circumstance where your stat difference compared to other races is totally null (and all other races have no means of claiming an equivalent boost). Or, if you are mega stacking boosts, you might be expected to expend more personal resources to make the most of it.

For everyone else, the reward is just about the same, and I'm even advocating a boost for those poor active siphoners, who take the brunt of the current wp toll more so than any other module.

Very fair.

Yeah, true.


Look, I'm not going to say abashing is too easy, or too hard. There's little chance of injury, and if you get too injured you die anyway. I think less creatures would be wonderful, perhaps make it harder for gargantuans to appear? I realize amobs are set depending on the area, but put more lixin/cloier/other aethertrash out in the vortices, and make gargantuans/dragons/tendrils a bit more rare.

I spent as much time in the UV tunnels as I did on astral.

EDIT: And Xion was an exp faucet? Yes, it might have been good for it's time, but are you really trying to compare a bubble that can be efficiently cleared by only one person for optimal gains to all of aetherspace, which is limited almost solely by player capacity and numbers?

She did. Jewelers everywhere were thankful for her constant rockeater bashing.

UV tunnels are just as easy to autobash. Hell I autobashed them as a warrior and still do as a mage. Just walk, point, shoot.

The point is automation is easy for anything and there is no denying it. Demigod is a fact of life now. More than half the demigods out there got it through automated easy modes.. ur'bashing, influencing, aetherbashing, Ascendant....

Is aetherbashing good? Yes.
Is it good in that you can do it all the time as opposed to bashing/influencing? No, you must have a group and if you have set the time up to get a decent group that can all be around for a few hours a day then more power to you for doing so.
Do Pick up Groups happen in aetherbashing? Yes.
You know what happens to PuGs? The same thing that happens in WoW, they go BOOM.

If any change needs to go in, just make the one change for active modules. Nerfing aetherspace any further than that will result in it not being used. I can tell you without a doubt that most the people I aetherbash with will not aetherbash if they lose experience bonuses, because I can get more by influencing at that point, including generating a decent income.

Degree of automation has never come into play with anything I've tried to argue. I still fail to see how the exp boost change would have that big of an impact that everyone would leave aspace entirely, especially in its current state of availability. Most of the boosts are limited in availability and how often they can be used, except for the human exp boost. So what it boils down to is, humans might take up other avenues while everyone else won't be in a terribly different situation.

If everyone starts influencing, there will be a scarcity of influenceable mobs. If everyone starts astral training, the plane will start to get killed off again and takes weeks to recover. People will still aspace just because there is nothing to limit it besides: having a ship, having the people, and having the aetherwill.

The alternative is to make vortexes significantly more scarce, and actively remove some of the clots in existence now, as mentioned earlier. If you would rather have highest exp rate per minute under all circumstances over unending mob sources, I don't really mind.

Just to add my own data point for those interested.

My first message is from the beginning of Feb, I reached level 100 in the beginning of July (08) with 35 days 14 hours of play time. This would be a bit less than 3 years in game if I had played non-stop. As I did more than just level this is an overestimation of the time required. I did a token amount of aetherspace and astral but almost all of that exp gain came from UV and Muud. This was as a human monk, with karma blessings and often favours but no other exp boost.

Monk combat was about as automated as you could get back when I was leveling. I would hit a button 1-2 times for each mob in a room and then move on. Some minor skill was involved in making sure I would not attack a room full of things I could not handle, and more was needed in Muud to make sure I did not walk into a group that could insta kill me. I make no claim that this required a lot of skill but it did require some.

Aetherspace requires a large investment for the ship and modules, it also requires attention from the pilot. The rest of the crew tasks can be completely automated. You do not even need to check a map, look ahead, refill potions, nothing. You can just let your triggers run and piggy back off of someone's work.

I do care that so many people are demigods but with a static exp curve eventually a large fraction of the player base will hit max level. The easier it is to level the greater that percentage will be. I wish demi was something special, limited to a small group (top 10 by xp or the like) but it seems clear this is not the intent of the admins.

So I agree with those who say that at this point limiting the xp gain from aetherspace is rather silly. I personally would rather see the rewards for the more dangerous ares of the PvE game increased. I would increase the rewards for Muud or Astral before I would tone down aetherspace. Specifically I would keep their xp rates the same but increase the gold drops or add quest turn ins.

If everyone is going to end up as a demi we might as well reflect the risk/reward/effort levels of the various paths to reach it.

Oh, hey, I could just go for getting gold drops in Muud too.

Human is not the only buff. In fact I didn't go human until relatively recently, certainly after double xp. I was elfen Lord up till then and always maintained Harmony blessing.

Everyone I know who goes aetherbashing gets a harmony. In fact we have stopped trips midway so people could go back and get Harmony.

Human just makes it better.

Dropping exp boosts completely -will- drop the number of people who aetherbash, because the only reason to aetherbash is experience. There is no gold really, there is no honours lines, there is only boredom and experience.

To be more specific I got less experience aetherbashing, as a non human, on the times I couldn't maintain harmony blessing than I could if I just went influencing. In fact, I turned down aetherspace hunts because I could get more experience doing something else. Dropping the exp boosts will have a significant impact on more than just humans. Again though, Human just makes it a whole lot better. Good thing not everyone is a human though. I could just imagine the crying then.

If I can get more experience + gold doing something else. I will do that. So will many others.

If you think there's no gold, you're clearly letting the Hearth pilots rip you off. Hearth is out right now trying to make a killing off of cheap stuff.

I seldom go out with Hearth. Don't let the fact I am in the clan fool you.

Also I didn't say there is no gold. I said there is no gold really.

I can make far more gold faster doing a run of manticores, rocs, and gorgogs. Than I can selling dust and splitting it with 12 people.

With how often that thing blows up I don't see why anybody would. D: