Ooo ooo, that creepy pool that just sits there in the Havens! Or that suspicious dwarf 'pilgrim' that seemed to have mysteriously disappeared... they can sell us our abilities!

I still think I favor the idea of the sparks system because people hate losing their stuff and buying it again. Like I said, just make essence a secondary mana, used for demigod skills you get via sparks.

No one is suggesting an upkeep, to my knowledge. I suggested buying your abilities for a period of time. IE you spend x essence and get the ability to divinefire for 30 days. So once those 30 days are up, you can buy it again for x essence, or not. Or wait a week. Once it's bought you have it and there's no daily upkeep etc.

Yes, putting a decay time on an ability and a flat cost is a lot easier than doing 'sparks' - but I feel one of the big advantages of decay times is that it's a recurring cost, so if you want the serious combat advantages, you need to pay for it at regular intervals - and it gives 'something' for essence to go into, so it's not just pooling.

It also allows for new abilities to be added in without 'overpowering' demigods - though I suppose that could be achieved with Sparks, too.

If the idea is essence sinks, I've given you an option I feel is much more palatable.

Well, I've always gotten the impression the lack of essence sinks is problematic! I think even you have been at the fore of this. Am I wrong? Would you rather have 500m essence that does nothing but build - or for people to 'feed' newbie demigods?

I must have missed your idea - link me to the post?

What about the ability to grant Karma blessings with essence instead of Karma (for yourself and others).

Maintaining one blessing might cost 1000 essence per hour, maintaining two might cost 2500 essence per hour, three might cost 5000, maintaining four might cost 10,000, maintaining 6 might cost 25,000. 7 50,000, 8 100,000, etc.

Numbers might need to be tweaked upwards a bit, but there's a continual ongoing drain of essence right there, that you could use for yourself and your friends, bypassing the whole karma requirement.

You might buy the ability to give a certain type of blessing from the Essence Shop for a large chunk of essence to begin with, too, so you'd have to do it 9x to be able to give all 9. If that's the case the upkeep numbers should probably not be excessively high, though-- remember that this would be a substitute for karma. Without having to go to the Seals.

Edit: I said Domoth blessings, obviously meant Karma blessings. Sorry!

Edit edit: This isn't so much my idea of a "replacement" or "compensation" for losing VA, but... discussing some kind of an essence shop and things we could use, that have continual costs, which would be for all Demi+s.

Well... I suggested earlier an idea of being able to (for an initial cost) buy the ability to grant certain Karma Seal blessings.

Then you could invoke them upon yourself / your friends, from the supply of those you purchased. Without having to use up karma.

It would then cost essence per hour instead of karma, with the essence cost rising the more of these you have activated at once.

Even if this idea itself isn't liked, I imagine you could still use the principal; you're not forced to keep re-buying the same ability (you always have it available), but if you choose to use it it has an essence drain while active. The drain would get larger the more you have going.

This would at least "slow down" being able to buy everything as people use their neat skills, and even if they're all bought... it'll take a fair amount of essence to keep juggling them all.

(Wouldn't work for a lot of one-time effects, but it could work pretty well for long-term effect purchases)

The idea was in his (most recent) post: rather than having the essence sink be purchasing the skill every X days, have it instead use Y essence every time it is used. Same end result, but less frustrating.

EDIT: Or the stuff he posted below, too.

That may work for things like zap or shout, but wouldn't work for things like stat increases or movement messages, etc.

Sure it would, if they were things you had to turn on for it to have effect... movement especially would work (it's only active if you DivineMask your movements, or whatever). Consider making things defenses instead of a permanent purchase that decays over time, with cost being when activated (ie, when they're being used) instead of just ticking down even if you aren't using it.

I'm thinking Omniscience drain here (low cost to put it up, drain over time). Omniscience's drain is extremely low and these other things would need to be higher most likely, but still, you have the concept in action already.

I'd be miserable if I had to calculate how much essence I need just to move around, and having to turn stuff on and off would probably be pretty annoying to code. I also feel like it doesn't address the problem of having divinefire, refresh, shrink, +2 all stats, etc, all at once - which seems to be one of the big complaint of demigods. Which means we'd need to do this in addition to something like the Spark system. Which really seems like two or three times the work to achieve the same thing. :\\

Edit: And even then, you'd have to turn on stats/movement messages/shout/cusotm teleport/whatever else just to use any one of them. Unless we made all of them separate switches, which again, becomes nightmarish for us (and even moreso).