Fireworks is already available in a dingbat artifact, so it wouldn't be so much a nerf since it's already available to non-Glamourists.

The only reason Fireworks is 10p is to stop people spamming an entire area.

If you want to create an actual essence drain, then you need to be careful with the essence shops. New abilities are all well and good, but if you can transform essence into something that is useful elsewhere, I think that could be better. For example the ability to create commodity items, or create more rooms in a manse. Things similar to that, which are potentially limitless.

Yeah, I don't have a problem with the fireworks one either. (The artifact one also has a per-day limit, so presumably there'd be an antispamming limit in this one, too.)

I really just wanted to get thunderclap back but in a hilarious, ironic way for that idea.

Problem with that then is that Nocht has (not picking on him, he's just the last to release his realm) 30 rooms in his realm, so 15 mobrealm denizens. Either we limit mine's spawnrate to fifteen (not fond of - I like the fact there's so many, and they can act as 'guards' or at least a helping hand during defense etc), or we max Nocht's up to mine (45), which won't happen for a variety of reasons (there aren't that many to begin with, heh). So I don't see that working - though I suppose we could do something wherein there's a cap on how much you can lose in a round, so I might lose x per mob, and Nocht might lose y per mob, and x * 45 = y * 15. So he'd be losing a ton per mob, where I'd only be losing a little. Seems a bit meh to me though.



Woops. Yea, I meant essence. I (personally) think we have enough places lessons get sunken into (I think Est's said for a long time she wanted to combine some skills, like Magic and high/low magic, etc).



It might end up being that way, but I don't see it any different than now - and I don't really see a problem with that, either. If someone wants to be Cult Leader and Ascendant and Attorney General for the State of Texas, god bless 'em. The only alternative would be to make it so Ascendants can't cults and... I can't see that going over well!

You know, maybe for the good of the game, the numbers of god-realm mobs need to be limited. Give them a cap of 15, make every realm have 15. They're not really very special if there are hordes and hordes of them after all, and those hordes make a pretty big difference in terms of defending (as you yourself note). They also provide an extreme imbalance in how quickly God-realm blessings can be granted.

Put a cap, balance out the protection they offer, and you remove this whole issue of imbalancing scale too.

You know, you have a personal tie to your god-realm protectors; we also have a personal tie to our VAs. We can use the exact same "We like the fact there are so many, because they can act as guards / a helping hand during defense etc" line. :/

You can compare them, but I don't buy it! Sorry!

Yeah, I'm fully aware you don't buy it; but then again, you've got a much closer tie to the stuff you've spent hours upon hours building up.

Just like we're more closely attuned to the stuff we spent hours working upon ourselves.

I'd wager I've spent as much time working on Ascendance as you have on your Realm, if not more.

How would you feel if we were discussing removing Realms from Gods? In exchange for getting the essence that was spent on it back. And maybe a shiny or two to spend that essence on otherwise. I'm guessing you wouldn't be happy, because you spent your time working on that specific application, that goal...

Realms provide some small combat boosts (the H/M/E blessings), they provide some essence, they take time and essence to develop; it really does sound quite similar to me, actually.

Darn it Xenthos, you put my subtly planned "I'm told that sometimes for the sake of game balance, we have to limit the assets any one org is allowed to possess," to shame. Regardless, if you were going to expand on cult conflict, you'd have to create a level playing field someway or the other.

There's no real point in splitting cults off ascendants if you're still going to imbue it with the same pk-relevant things. If you're going to give the cult stuff to give to Avatars, keeping cults limited and condoning that one person hold both positions, well it's pretty much sounding like 19 pages later and we're going with Plan A, plus or minus a divinefire nerf.

Actually, your understanding (and, it's our fault - I believe we keep it fairly close to the breast) on what it takes to expand a realm is fairly poor. Needlessly said, to say I have (and continue to) pumped thousands of hours into my realm is probably an understatement.

Thankfully, the size of my realm is not really the topic of discussion and we're not looking to cap the number of denizens, nor are we looking to review some of those basic aspects. So we're going to go ahead and drop that.

And I've pumped thousands of hours into Ascendance-things by this point, as well. Further, I still continue to as well!

Yet we're proposing to take something I've put this time into away from me. I'm just... curious how you'd feel if Estarra was discussing the removal of Realms, really, and replacing them with... say... purchasable Divine Powers. Spend 10,000,000 essence for Zap, 5,000,000 for custom entry/exit, etc. Plus a few other RP perks that you might not currently have.

Does that really seem like it's a decent exchange to you? Would you feel satisfied, pleased, happy?

I'm still not seeing anything that you all are willing to discuss that would be at all a compromise / middle ground, in exchange for punishing us and taking away what we've spent so much time working on. The compromises we suggest get told "I don't agree," and just flat-out dismissed, so... yeah. I will admit this topic is a bit off-topic, but I'm seriously starting to get a bit frustrated again. We really seem to be exactly where we were. Which is unfortunate.

I still believe the Paragon compromise is the best way you have of keeping the players happy, removing some rewards (most especially the biggest combat-bonus, the Domoth bonuses, and Fearaura) but not all, is the way to go here. It does require a little rethinking of The Vision™ on your side, but it is also a bit of rethinking on ours. No longer actual Vernals, that honour would be limited to exactly 1 person per organization; making it the true RP / Combat / Pinnacle honour that is being sought.

We do already, actually. Not custom entry/exit, but we have to reach certain essence markers to be able to zap, favour, etc. We also have to pay to have denizens in our temple, to expand our temple, for quests in our temple, for... Anything, actually. Welcome to our world, I guess!



As far as I'm aware, you're basically asking for Vernal Ascendant to be called 'Paragon' and to take a few (relatively unimportant) points of interest from them, and then to design something new for Vernal Ascendants.

So really, I'm feeling like you're the one unwilling to compromise!

We're told that there are 2 reasons that Vernals need to be restricted.

1) Because Vernal Ascendant is supposed to be a unique, prestige-worthy title.
2) Because it provides combat bonuses.

The compromise addresses both of these. It removes the combat bonuses by
1) Removing the Fearaura.
2) Removing the Domoth bonuses, which are the most significant bonuses granted to Ascendants.
3) Giving a penalty for dying without enough essence to support that death; instead of losing it, though, your org would be slapped with a power penalty.

It addresses the prestige-part by saying, "These are representatives of the organization, but they are not as effective as our actual Ascendant, of which there is and can be only one." It is a title, yes. It is a reward that can be given, but it is not the ultimate reward. It is lesser than what we are now, but it's not a complete stripping of everything that we have had for years.

Perhaps you can tell me what remains at that point that is still unbalancing, really? Maybe that's where the discussion needs to go next.

The Domoth benefit is not the relatively unimportant bit here. That is in fact one of the biggest reasons for raising the first bunch of VAs, and that is why you want to raise combat VAs. Domoths provide a great number of advantages!

Edit: You don't even really have to design anything new for VAs, the Domoth benefit is quite significant on its own.

Well, we'd keep Ascendance as a Vernal-only thing.

And I can see no reason to allow you to spend power to make someone a demigod under a special name without anything added to it beyond petting a few egos. Sorry!

Now I strongly advise just dropping it - it's not happening, and move on.

Can you respond to the question, please? What is left that is so overpowering about the idea, even in the Ascendance skillset, once you've removed Fearaura? There's little in the way of combat left excepting aegis, which (with its workarounds) is fine IMO. But even that could potentially be addressed if that's really the only hang-up left.

See, the "it's not happening, drop it" stuff is what's frustrating me / leading me to believe that there is no compromise here; because I don't get where you're coming from, and there's no real explanation of the standpoint. It's like running into a brick wall.

You can even limit making someone a Paragon require that they're Demigod first if the last remaining issue is insta-leveling someone to level 100 for power.

I don't understand why you keep harping that there's something 'overpowered' involved. The role, and the bonuses, are intended to be rare. Plain and simple.

Ascendance was designed for Vernal Ascendants. It was intended to be rare and uncommon, and to be part of the role. Once we strip Ascendance of Cults, we can build it around that idea again. Unfortunately I do not believe domoth bonuses, alone, are considered 'worthwhile' for a Vernal Ascendant - nor am I very fond of the general idea of the Paragons role. I feel like it's pretty contrived, out of place in Lusternia and, at the day's end, it would be nothing more than a ploy to make a few people feel consoled over the loss of something that, frankly, they should not have had to begin with, by and large. All it is would be the current, existing system of Vernal Ascendants, with a different name.

And clearly, we're not okay with the system as-is. All you've 'proposed' to 'compromise' is 'keep things as they are but make the title rare'. That is, if nothing else, immensely frustrating.

I'm not really sure how fixing the complained-about skill, removing the largest bonus given, and then punishing organizations if a person is suicidally rampaging around with 0 essence is "keeping things as they are". It's kind of frustrating on this end when you downplay these as being "nothing" as well... because they're not.

You raise VAs (under the current system) primarily for the following reasons:
1) To make a Demigod fighter;
2) To have another fighter for Domoths;
3) To have someone who can claim Domoths in a good amount of time.

These are the reasons players raise Ascendants, and this is what Ascendants have been billed as pretty much since three months after they were released (Ascendance was transed about 3 months later, people got a look at the full skillset, and people had had that much time to examine Domoths with Demigods / Ascendants). As for Paragon being "contrived," Estarra has been amazing at finding RP reasons for such things in the past. If there was a desire to examine this, an RP reason and explanation could be worked up pretty well, I think.

Now, why do you feel like I shouldn't have had Vernal Ascendant? Or, Talan? Or Sidd? Nejii? Sarrasri? What about us makes us unfit for the role, in your opinion, both as it was originally released and even under the proposed system?




New thoughts, based on your first couple of sentences in the second paragraph there (and to try to keep the discussion moving):
You state stripping out Cults from Ascendance, and then reworking the Ascendance skillset to take into account that VA is supposed to be more rare (which, I imagine, you wouldn't want to do if more than just VA/TA had it); so, if you take Cults out of Ascendance, you now have a fraction of the skillset left. That could be all that Paragons are able to learn, whereas VAs / TAs are able to specialize in Ascendance itself. In fact, that might even be how you get the RP in; you have a certain threshold of "immortal power" giving you certain Divine powers (where you reach when you are raised from Demigod to Paragon), but only an Ascendant is able to master it past that point.

That is, of course, based completely on an interpretation of your response which may or may not be correct, but... it's somewhere to delve, at least.

Just to keep things on track and so we don't get stray too far off the way, I don't think we'll be doing the "paragon" thing but we are still looking for more of those ever-elusive ideas for possible abilities/skills/benefits for ascendants/demigods.

Well, I always liked the Divine Havens. It is so neat up there. Can some RP flavour be added? I don't really know of what to put in there...