Call them sparks, not beast trains! I feel goofy having suggested that forgetting it was almost exactly how beast trains work.

Call them demi-batteries for all I care. I'd rather that system than the upkeep proposal.

Well, there'd be an upkeep either way. You just would have an active one so people see your custom messages, you gain advantage of the stats, could zap, could have a custom shout, etc. An active essence drain while you're online moving about, proportionate to how much stuff you bought.

If I bash up the essence for skills, I don't want to have to keep bloody bashing up the essence for the exact same skills. Repeatedly forced-grinding to maintain the status quo does not have an appeal.

Well, I'm going off what I've observed over the years. The complaint is building essence pools that have no outlet. This is an outlet that does not have an expiration date (ie ends when you put in y amount of essence), and is a lot cleaner and simpler than turning demigods into beastmaster pets with upkeep costs whenever you want to take them out of the stables. I think I would greatly prefer the option of buffing myself to extreme levels, if I felt a need (see: ascension), than having a single hard cap that is immovable. I really suspect there will come a day in the not too distant future where you'll want to be able to spend essence to move that cap up a bit, to buy more 'spark points' or what have you, and then we kind of just end back up where we are. :\\

For the record I always imagined the "essence shop" wouldn't actually be a place you go, but just shorthand for being able to spend essence on stuff. Seems silly that you'd have to go anywhere particular to do it.

I'm not sure how good this sounds to anyone else, but how about this:

Instead of continually piling on stats, pvp abilities, and the like, maybe have an area where Demi's can go to be completely OP. Not necessarily like the Havens/Domoths, but an area where Demi's can use epic abilities, and do epic quests (with epic results?). Nothing that anyone would expect the quasi-Divine to -have- to do, but maybe some neat buffs or honours lines.

Maybe if the Admins were particularly willing/adventurous/foolish they could even allow character building specifically for this region (i.e. Divine skillsets/equipment), all at a heavy essence cost. If Demi's were allowed to respec their character completely, this could be a nearly limitless essence sink (if the players were motivated to try everything out).

The advantage of the whole thing is to allow Demi's to be godlike, but not to the point that no mortal can compete with them, but allows more Demi's to feel like they've accomplished something.

I imagine the work (for the admins) would be pretty intensive (though balance isn't necessarily as big of an issue), but it would be quite a large essence sink for endgame players (and I think it would be pretty fun, if I were a Demi ). Personally, I would prefer this to some silly entrance lines or minor stat gains, but maybe that's just me.

^ this is pretty much the idea of the domoth realms

This is what I always thought too.

And, if you went with decaying things, the day would come when we'd want to spend essence to make the decay time go further into the future / disappear, etc...

Players always want more. That's not a shocker, heh.

Grinding just to rebuy things over and over is a heck of a lot more annoying than being able to turn things that I want on and off, with essence-drained-over-time based on what I'm using. I have full and absolute control over what I'm spending, and why, and I don't feel like I'm "wasting" my time after having bought it.

As a current example: Karma blessings. When I go get karma blessings, I feel like I'm wasting time if I'm doing something that doesn't take advantage of them because there's this great big timer that slowly counts down; and that timer only counts down when I'm online!

Achievements; how many people like to "waste" their achievement bonus time?

So on, and so forth. Time limited stuff, along with having to continually repay to reactivate it, just... isn't a pleasing concept, y'know?

Well I'm sure if someone really wants to invest to be uberbuff for a brief moment of time, there can be a power (that takes a huge amount of essence/takes up all spark slots) you can buy that will do just that. The cost can be quite steep and given it's a one time ability that you activate, it won't be permanent.

And like I said, the importance is making the cap a number that is perfectly reasonable. 10 might not be too flexible, so make it 50, and so on.

Agree. That would be preferrable for everyone's sake.

The initial argument against demigod was that it's unfair to players at a lower level. They argue that pve grind shouldn't have pvp rewards. The result? Take away the demigod aspects and require grind to regain them. I'm still completely unconvinced that anything other than divinefire needs addressed; it's pure common sense to balance a game around the top level (demigod) and saying otherwise is idiotic unless that person is arguing for level 0 or level 1 balancing. It's just a simple, inherent fact that any form of leveling means that the higher levels have greater benefits.

I dedicated my time to becoming a demigod. The fact that I may have had it easier to others isn't pertinent to the point that I did dedicate time. My only concerns for bashing is gold and enough essence to maintain demigod; to some people 75 million essence may be a drop in the bucket. To me, 75 million essence to unlock anything remotely associated with pvp is a deterrent to the game itself. An essence shop would be nice, but not for the things that I worked for in getting demigod.

I'd be willing to listen to a beast-train type system, but first I want someone to prove to me (Rodngar has thus far ignored me, unless he did post but it was deleted with the rest) as to why balancing at level 100 is illogical or that the current status of demigod is unbalanced. I admit that level 99 is at a disadvantage to level 100 and that level 99 is at a disadvantage to level 98. That's how leveling works. I want reasoning that isn't circular and doesn't "call the kettle black."

Well, you're right in that, say, a level 10 is disadvantaged against a level 11. And 11 to 12, 70 to 71, and so on.

But once you hit 99 and 100, the disadvantage just increases exponentially. You're not looking at a mere 40 increase to all stats and 5 lessons/bound credits: you're looking at +2 BASE to all stats (resulting in +4 or 5 total on some classes with buffs), divinefire (big in the combat zone), zap, escape skills, the works.

If you want to balance the game around level 100, you're going to have to be balancing around the concept that everyone is of that level, and that everyone can divinefire/refresh their power/have +2 base stats. Except everyone can't. They can GET that, sure, with an arseload of effort, but balancing around an outlier (at least, it was) may not be the best idea.

Alright. Well, it seems like the dead horse is being beaten on the system by which it could be done. What benefits/bonuses do you all want to see from the system? I've seen some ideas floating about (special teleport messages, special enter/exit messages, special look descriptions, I've seen ideas about changing the damage-type on zaps, the ability to give domoth blessings). What else?

Not forgetting the second (or more? ) tradeskill, special emotes (perhaps limited to one or a few per Demi) would be nice. They'd have to go through approval like shouting voice/zap does now, of course.

The special emotes would, of course, be unique to the Demi.

Like the 'make it like beastmastery idea'.

Especially if we make the pools based on the seals as opposed to mind/body/soul, and have flavor text based on how many trains is in a particular pool. So if someone's got a couple Death trains you'll see their entry message causing nearby plants to wilt, but someone with a lot of Death trains would get a poisonous smoggy aura on LOOK and messages that cause room spam like perfumes do. That kind of thing would be nice.

I don't foresee us doing more things that require someone to review and approve. It is, already, a painful process, heh. But I'll add it to the proverbial list.

I don't remember anything about pools. My understanding was just one pool, and all abilities took from it. IE you had 30 points in a pool, and divinefire would require 20 points, refresh would require 20 points, shrink would require 20 points, zap would require 5 points, custom enter would require 1 point, custom look would require 1 point, etc etc.

And you probably would only be able to change what's in your pool every 24 hours or something.

I know I said Domoth blessings, but I really did mean Karma blessings. Domoth blessings are too strong to be given out individually I think (some of them, at least).

This is about what I feel like I've been trying to say, just with the wrong words.

I would say that making endgame quicker to 'get to' would be the solution since everybody seems to be oh so against removing some of the more problematic benefits OF endgame.