I totally want to know where that crazy 'pilgrim' went. Dude was hitting for like, 1000 per 2 seconds.

I totally understand the need to limit the growth of VAs. I really, really do. Still, I hope that you look past the master plan to the sentiments that people are expressing here, hoping that you're hearing them. Taking away what players grant to each other is pretty harsh. We've had this conversation once before. It's like deja vu.

Is there any compelling reason why 2-3 should be the stopping point for VAs and not 4-6? That seems like a much, much simpler plan that will make a lot more people more sympathetic to the change.

Would you at least be willing to discuss the concept? Pros, cons, what the serious objections that you have are, what might make bypassing those obstacles possible. Essentially, actually having a discussion with those of us who are going to be impacted to try to come to a conclusion that is acceptable to yourself and to (most of) us (as it's going to be difficult to please everyone).

I mean, we have two extremes here. One is lose everything (dumped back to Demigod, given some "consolation" line). One is lose nothing (stay exactly as we are). A compromise would be... well, somewhere in the middle. I do feel that the proposal is somewhere in the middle; and, if it's not acceptable, what do you feel is an acceptable compromise? Because stripping everything is a pretty big punishment, as we've discussed in detail. And you have expressed an interest in trying to figure out a way to lessen that.

Also, is this really straying from the topic? This topic is about the whole end-game shake-up, including the changes that are being done to Ascendants. The essence shop is decent, but it's not the whole picture here. There are a lot of us who are going to be impacted by your decision. I don't feel that this part of the discussion should just be forgotten.

Hey, kill two birds with one stone:

Holding the War seal gives Forging
Nature seal gives Herbs
Knowledge seal gives Bookbinding
Beauty seal gives Jewelry
Life seal gives Cooking
Death seal gives Poisons
Chaos seal gives Tinkering or Brewmeister
Justice seal gives Artisan
Harmony seal gives Tailoring (these last two are a bit of a stretch but whatever)

Real, epic justice is an armani suit on a hobo.

Harmony is not achieved meditating on a feasting table.

Nice try though. Muaha.

I've totally not read the full topic, but whatever.

I kind of want the essence shop to be based on seals.

You can pour essence into the seals to get powers, so you've got:
- Seal-flavour room/entry/exit messages (blood/fire aura for War, fruity flowery aura for Nature)
- Seal-flavour arrpee skillz (like item creation, so you can burn a bit essence to create a glass skull for Death)
- Seal-flavour zap damage type change (psychic for Chaos, fire for War, etc)
- Seal-flavour ascend message (kind of like the touch seal medallion effects)
- Seal-flavour regen bonii (astral = Chaos, forest = Life, etc)
- Seal-flavour emotes

It'd be nice to see them upgradable too, so you've three levels for things like the room messages, starting at a glowy neat flavor effect to a "THOROS IS STANDING HERE ON THE CORPSES OF A THOUSAND UNBORN BABIES" type effect to show how much essence you've burnt to look like a badass.

No idea how to incorporate this within all the arguments, but more Seal/nexus arpee abilities tied to Ascendance would be dandy. Like, splitting Ascendance into the base cult abilities then branches off into specs which circle around the Seals/nexus.

Like, say, if Bob decided to spec his Ascendance, he'd get:

Nature
-Enabling himself/others to get the Nature Seal blessing for karma/reduced karma amount.
-Area wide nature growth/nature guard for essence.
-A dandy nature rain that'd work area wide with some cool emote about flashing lightning and deluging rains.
-The ability to influence animals?
-Room-wide full herb regrowth to max once an IC day/month.

Knowledge
-Enabling himself/others to get the Knowledge Seal blessing for karma/reduced karma amount.
-Seek without being in the Havens/marauder's map scry with map?
-A quicker time to create rifts/statues/pathways maybe since we're so nerdy, we know how to do it more efficiently?
-Think, Teacher Tarot that changes each midnight? No, not past trans so that we have un-dispellable illusions or unbreakable traps.
-A chance to learn a different language each midnight?

Beauty
-Enabling himself/others to get the Beauty Seal blessing for karma/reduced karma amount.
-A passive ability to spot secret entrances in a room? Discerning eye and whatnot?
-The Conceal ability in Glamours? Hiding something in the room with a fun desc or something.
-An active ability to fully revert an influenced mob back into the willful level but influencable again? (Limit once an IC month for those worried about revolt abuse.)
-Like Shuyin suggested before, custom dreams for the sleeping?

Chaos
-Enabling himself/others to get the Chaos Seal blessing for karma/reduced karma amount.
-An ability to destroy an item on the ground a la Tully's Broom? Disintegration!
-A change in description race each midnight? Not an actual, statistical, racial change, but just the description. Like, being a mugwump one midnight to an orclach the next.
-A bump to insanity recovery as wiccans and guardians enjoy on their home plane?
-An ability to randomly pop yourself to an astral node. Astral plane only!

Harmony
-Enabling himself/others to get the Harmony Seal blessing for karma/reduced karma amount.
-The Autumn ability in Low Magic maybe.
-A defense raised to cut the next experience loss incurred through death/reincarnation in half?
-The ability to soothe aggressive denizens.
-An ability to harmonize to one channel in specific not usually available to the caster with the acceptance of someone who has access to that channel? (Ie. a Seren Harmony spec asks to harmonize with the CT of a Glom-member if the Glom-member accepts and the Seren can talk and listen to it normally through, I dunno, HCT or something). And there'll be like, a channel-wide message that they've been tapped into so no, it can't be used to spy into people.

Justice
-Enabling himself/others to get the Justice Seal blessing for karma/reduced karma amount.
-A flavour ability to convert a riftable item into a different riftable item? Mind, only on one thing at a time for some essence cost. Gold comm -> Kombu, like. Equal exchange?!
-Basically, Emissary for cheaper fines/appraisement to get unenemied to denizen areas.
-An active ability to siphon one random affliction on a target to yourself on a long balance? Even more equivalent exchange?!
-A boost to Benevolence and an introduction to a 1:1 exchange between caster and target of either essence, esteem, or karma.

War
-Enabling himself/others to get the War Seal blessing for karma/reduced karma amount.
-A tiny tiny increase in critical hit percentage? (Arpee it out with knowing exactly where to hit to do more damage maybe?)
-An aura to cause a small (5%?) chance for non-adventurer crittable denizens to not hit the caster for that round but will resume on the next (unless they hit that 5% chance again). And I specify non-adventurer denizens so that ent-based classes aren't screwed by this and I specify crittable so that smobs won't get cowed by it.
-An ability to cause non-adventurer crittable denizens into attacking their denizen comrades. Denizen on denizen combat ftw? Easy way to clear a room of denizens! Of course, stipulation is, one) you need to be in the room or the aggression dies and two) if that denizen kills another denizen, then you'll get status in that area just as you would if you killed the critter yourself. And, as above, I specify non-adventurer denizens so that ent-based classes aren't screwed by this and I specify crittable so that smobs won't kill their own things by it.
-A defense to regain health upon damaging a denizen a la Nightkiss health regen.

Life
-Enabling himself/others to get the Life Seal blessing for karma/reduced karma amount.
-An ability to scan the current health/maximum health of a denizen for no balance. Denizen only, would make bashing and stuff easier.
-An ability which sticks a counter on you which increases that counter by 1 per denizen kill made. With the charges, you can rez a soul or a body which will heal them according to how many charges the Life person has. (Ie. 100 charges = 100% healed, 50 charges = 50% health healed)
-Ability to raise a denizen corpse from the dead for essence only if they have the corpse on the ground? Interruptable, 2-5min. cast, once an IC month?
-An ability to heal a damaged denizen maybe?

Death
-Enabling himself/others to get the Death Seal blessing for karma/reduced karma amount.
-Undead influencing.
-As mentioned before - teleport to a soul? Stopped by monoliths, yadda yadda.
-Corpse destruction for essence.
-The ability to see the last thing killed in a room within the past 30 mins - 1 hour and by who, maybe? No idea how you'd code that since it'd be another layer of memory...so...

Nexus
-Immunizing themselves to the effects of movement on their home elemental plane? For the communes, no getting blown out of the trees!
-Via/Flow depending on home organization?
-Enabling illusions to be used at the home nexus only. That way, no combat impact, but lots of roleplay potential since people gather at the nexus during rituals anyway.
-2% draws instead of 1% draws from the nexus maybe?
-The ability to tune and affix runes on 5 totems for a year/the ability to empower 5 statues to give power to the city for a year. Big essence cost to do so, once per IC year.
-Delayed teleport to the village obelisks tied to your nexus?
-An ability to hear the cries of organizationally loyal creatures and have them say who is hitting them rather than just the Daughters/Ladies for wiccans and aspects for the druids, etc.

You know, basic flavour/utility things without bordering on the combative aspects.

Quick Edit: Oh, oh, and like, TA's or something can get the seal spec + 1 more and the VA's can get the nexus spec + 1 more or something?! No clue. I'm tired. Thanks be to Kaalakface, Alinub and Esanopoo for dealing with my random morning blabber of ideas.

Why not turn it into a dream aura?

Those asleep around you will have an X% chance of dreaming dreams you made?

Well, I'm seeing some ideas at least, and that's a great thing! Some interesting ones too. Let's certainly keep them coming!

One point though - we're already talking about two skillsets (Ascendance, something with cults). Presuming we go this route (as painful as it may be!), I just can't imagine coding what would become 10 skillsets (cults, Ascendance w/ 9 specs). That's a bit much! I liked the original theme of Ascendance, wherein most of the active abilities were domoth-themed. Like I said specializing is a bit much, but the way it works now is there's bonuses for holding a domoth - we could probably keep that aspect, and roll with it? Any ideas on how to do that?

Important: If there are bonuses for holding a Domoth, please write them down somewhere. Help file or AB would be best!

Even if you don't make specializations, you can still use the abilities suggested to beef out the new Ascendance, considering how much it's going to lose with cults. Most Ascendance skills are supposed to have a domothean or historical basis, after all.

Would also be interesting if the most powerful/most significant ability of those was only available to the holder of that Domoth, hm.

EDIT: To clarify, I don't think many people would expect you to incorporate every suggested ability if you did that, just one or two from/for each domoth. Even just one from each is nine new skills, to replace the seven cult abilities and possibly the two most controversial existing abilities, assuming you don't want to increase the total number of abilities available. I'd be all for an increase in available abilities, though! I understand it's just more work.

I think we're saying the same thing! Good to know we're on the same page.



Interesting! I like the idea. I think we're better off making abilities more effective (maybe only certain aspects work when you have the domoth - as a quick example, let's say there's a life-themed skill that resurrects people. Except, it only works on bodies - though if you have the domoth, it'll work on souls, but you, too, die. If you have the domoth crown, you can rezz souls, you don't die, but it drops you by 9/10s of your health).

I think that's a bit more of an effective way of approaching it - I think people generally feel better when there's 'add-ons' to an ability, so to speak, for having something, versus entire skills being largely inaccessible.

Conversely, it certainly makes things more interesting - we can balance the skillset around the idea you can't have life and death, chaos and harmony, etc etc.



Nothing says we'll incorporate any ability suggested! It's good to have lots of ideas! We can increase the total number of abilities, we can decrease it. We'll see! It does have fewer skills than most skills, so I don't see any reason why we need to keep the number the same.

Let's have a big pool of suggestions to pull from!

If you want to get really technical you don't really have to make 16 skills (remember org based suggestions)

You would need to describe 16 different skills worth of abilities that's all.

Certain slots in the skill could be available for xiels suggestions, while the rest of the skill is duplicated just appearing differently. Though things like flight probably would remain the same for everyone or just in a base skill from these specs.

Over the course of the past two days, I have read both this thread and its precedent (Vernal Announcement, Announce 1528) in their entirety. While I am new to Lusternia, I feel I have gained a general understanding of how the Ascendant system works, the powers and benefits thereby conferred, a vague concept of the cost (and politics) involved in raising a Vernal Ascendant, and an inkling of the effort a Vernal Ascendant must expend to gather essence and improve their Ascendance skill set. (I'm still not entirely clear on the mechanics of the aforementioned, but I'm fairly sure Lessons aren't used to improve Ascendance, for fairly obvious reasons.)

Overall, I'm displeased by what I'm seeing here — although I am glad Estarra decided to hold off on implementing the upkeep costs for now, and conduct an overview first.

Normally, I'm a "root for the underdog, stick it to the man" sort of person, and as such, might not mind seeing the mighty (i.e., Vernal Ascendants) brought low... but this is beyond the pale. For years, people were given to believe that their Vernal Ascendant status could only be stripped for in-game political or role-playing reasons; thus assured, they spent many thousands of hours improving their Ascendance skill set, fostering RP related to their status, developing their character as a Vernal Ascendant, and so on and so forth.

And now — unexpectedly, arbitrarily, "for the good of the game" — a game mechanic may (note I say "may") be introduced that will literally force organizations to choose some of their Vernals, and strip them of their powers. How is stripping an Ascendance skill set that someone spent years laboring on any different (in essence) from stripping any other skill set from any other player? The only difference I can see is the fact that Credits and Lessons cannot be used to improve Ascendance.

It's shady, in my opinion. The admins won't single anyone out to strip them of their powers; the game mechanics will force other players to choose Vernal Ascendants to strip instead. The admins also seem to feel that a "pat on the back" is sufficient compensation to someone who spent many, many hours fostering their Ascendance skill set, and is chosen to be stripped by their organization. An honorary title? A few perks? In my opinion, thousands of compensatory Credits wouldn't be sufficient restitution.

This affects me as a new player because, quite frankly, seeing the rug (potentially) pulled out from under long-time players causes me wonder whether something similar might happen to me in three or four years' time. Of course, eventually the Ascendant system itself may affect me personally, so the changes themselves (whatever they turn out to be) are pertinent, too.

I normally would not comment on a topic like this, being so very new, but it's a major event with the potential to change the game significantly.



For the above-mentioned reasons, I think "increasing cost to raise" will be far, far, far preferable to "exponential, perpetual upkeep cost." It's still not ideal, as it means that Vernal Ascendants who keep their status for the next five RL years will create a grandfathered system that makes it much harder for newer players to (eventually) achieve the same honor, but it's livable.

Good points there, Cambrian.

I'd still like to actually have a conversation between the Administration / the people who are going to be punished by this in regards to finding a middle ground that's actually satisfactory (as you state, "take everything away and give a consolation line" isn't it). Hear what the proposal is on their end, etc; we've offered one from ours, and I do feel that with the tweaks made to it with the bits we got from Eventru that it is a decent middle ground, but without actually speaking... it's really tough to actually bridge the gap.

We're not continuing the discussion as to whether or not to have an upkeep. Please do not drag the topic back there, or I'll begin deleting posts.

Thank you.

Cambrian mentioned upkeep; you'll note that I did not, however. I am, instead, exploring the modifications being discussed for those who lose VA (which is, as far as I'm aware, still a part of the discussion as per the first post in the thread). I am further asking that there be a conversation between the Administration and those of us who are going to be affected to try to come up to an equitable middle ground that can leave everyone happy.

So, is your post addressed at me, as I did not even go there?

We've moved away from that topic - and desist pretending you're not discussing the same thing, because you rather are.

Seriously, we're not going back to that topic, at least not right now, so quit trying to bring it back there.

I'm just going to start deleting posts.

We are, in case you missed it, discussing desired abilities/rp perks for demigods/ascendants/retired vernals.

Ex-Vernals keep the Veneration ability in Ascendance and one other ability of their choice which they have already learned that isn't Fearaura, Destruction, or Aegis. Bam!

If we want new cool abilities based on the Domoth a person holds, make each Domoth give its holder the ability to shoot a ray of pure Domoth energy at a target (DOMOTH BLAST ). This requires but does not consume balance/eq and can only be used once per day (or has some other similar hard limit on its use - NOT merely an essence cost). The rays would each give a different, thematically-related affliction:

War: Recklessness
Justice: Justice
Nature: Agoraphobia
Knowledge: Stupidity
Beauty: Rigormortis
Life: Sensitivity
Death: Blacklung
Harmony: Confusion
Chaos: Random masked affliction cured by focus mind

Kapow!