Okay, now that I am on lunch break and have some more time...

Nature:
- Was: Affinity
- Change to: Affinity (as it is now)

Death:
- Was: Fearaura
- Change to: An essence ability to summon an organization member's corpse to yourself. Restrictions: The corpse must exist, and it may not have already been summoned by another Ascendant. The person must be a member of your organization.

Life:
- Was: Cult ability
- Change to: The ability to rez a body for essence. Restrictions: You must be holding the corpse in your hands.

War:
- Was: Destruction
Change to: Destruction (as it is now, though it would be nice if it was tweaked to not be int-dependent so everyone can use it to real effectiveness... and, at the same time, not become completely OP when stacked with high int and a +magic % rune. Basically, remove the "Source: Magic" and give it a flat rate based on the current 18-int-amount.)

Justice:
- Was: Aegis
- Change to: Aegis (as it is now)

Chaos:
- Was: Portal
- Change to: Portal, with the following amendment: Since Cult is no longer tied to this, you can open a portal to any member of your Organization instead of just Cult members.

Harmony:
- Was: Omniscience
- Change to: Omniscience (as it is now)

Beauty:
- Was: Cult ability
- Change to: ???

Knowledge:
- Was: Cult ability
- Change to: ???

Edit: Edited for layout.

With the suggested numbers (5->10->15), there's far more than a 50 to 100% gap. The amended suggestion actually lowers said gap considerably! I could've just gone with a 50->100->150 range, I suppose (multiply everything by 10), but it did seem a bit too wide to me at that.

What if Beauty let you do some kind of Illusions? Requires full H/M/E so it can't be used in combat, but could then use it for rituals and the like. Hard to beat that for Beauty, really.

Still stumped on knowledge, but that's just one more thing really if the rest are acceptable. Should be easier to pick it off.

Edit:
Knowledge:
- Every Demigod ability you purchase requires one less point. This cannot be forgotten if, upon forgetting it, your point total would rise above your maximum. (Not likely to happen, but hey, it's an idea And again would be fully in-line with Knowledge, being able to learn / retain more.)

Knowledge: Once per month, you can gift another with a small random amount of lessons.

Teacher Tarot effect in the skill of your choice. Duration, costs essence.

Some of those abilities we may keep as Veneration Cult skills. We wouldn't mind more suggestions for:

Chaos - Something random? Not sure why portals were associated with chaos. Produce random X commodities?

Harmony - Maybe a boost to parley.

Knowledge (dunno why I called it Science) - Why is this one hard to come up with ideas? No free lessons! Omniscience always sounded more knowledge to me than 'harmony'. Maybe a different type of omniscience? Ability to see where anyone is?

Scry without an equilibrium cost?

Not sure about no equilibrium, though could definitely consider something extremely low (one second, maybe less). I'm not fond of it being constantly spammable. Is this an ascendant worthy power? Maybe they could have some sort of tracking ability or spying type ability? Eavesdrop at 20 spaces?

I see things are pretty well set now, so I won't waste time arguing, but I'd just like to comment that I'm rather disappointed (and surprised) to see the admin back down on ascendant power drains and implement, essentially, the "paragon" system with a different name. Was going to be good times.

I'd be very much against this being an Ascendant demipower. We have all been pleading for this for eternity, even having wild dreams (and daydreams) of the day that Estarra says yes. Limiting it to so few people who, as has been argued avidly in this thread, are more chosen for their PK skills than RP skills, would really defeat the purpose.

I'd rather see it as an Avatar Cult power/skill personally. Which is still only some people, yes, and needs demigod first (not an issue these days), but I imagine Cults will more focus on RP than Ascendants will. In the event that Cult leaders are still to be chosen based on their PvP/PvE skills though (cool combat advantaged or whatnot, would be a shame), just make it a very expensive demigod demipower perhaps?

I've been too busy lately to keep up with the thread in its entirety, so forgive me if I bring up somethings that has already been addressed.


From what I see, the demigod, vernal demigod, and ascendants seems to look like an awesome idea, although I do have some worries.

Are "vernal demigods" going to be achievable in any way post this implementation or do they, in fact, represent ex-VAs only. If there's no way for a demigod to become a vernal demigod, I think the fact that they will have a mechanical advantage as well as hard-coded limitation is unfair to every org and person. Also, raising a demigod to VA for 2mil and stripping to create a vernal demigod seems counter productive. Perhaps an org can pay 500k to create a vernal demigod?

Secondly, I'm not sure I like the idea of buying ephemeral powers for a high price. It's a cop-out for a meaningful essence shop, and if something costs 15mil essence and only lasts 12 days, it's not worth purchasing in my book. Last time I checked, I was 45th ranked in experience with over 16mil essence. I can't, for obvious reasons, compare my essence to those ranked higher, but everyone under me has less, and some of those players are more active than me. Granted, the motivation to have essence would cause an increase, but similarly, I do not have the time to maintain even one ephemeral skill. I am far more in favour of systems that reward player ability rather than player play-time. Ephemeral skills at a high cost do the latter, rewarding individuals who are less invested in other activies.

Finally, while I would prefer having all demigod skills capable of being purchased permanently, I am in favour of limiting the amount of abilities. However, I think the goal should be to allow demigods to purchase the majority of their current abilities back and permanently. Or at least give us the things that actually matter in demigod RP for free: zap, custom shout, ascend. Those three abilities, I assert, are those most recognized by the playerbase outside of combat. Combat-oriented skills (excluding zap) should be affected.

It would make the most sense for paying for an "ephemeral" power to cost a fraction of what purchasing it permanently does, I feel;
You might pay a million essence for something for a bit of time, or 15,000,000 to have access to it forever (and use up some slot-points at the same time). Would be rather weird to pay the same amount both ways, so that's what I'd imagine they already had in mind. Ephemeral powers really shouldn't be over a million essence per 12-day period I think (especially since there are looking to be a whole lot of them). Can jack the price way up for permanent, because eventually it will pay for itself on the stuff you really like / use. Then you'll still be burning essence on some of the other ephemeral powers you either can't afford (by either essence or slots), or don't want to buy outright.

I think that's fair to some degree, but I'm not in favour of rewarding players' time-played over player skill. If someone can play and bash for 6 hours a day and turn around and pvp for a few hours, that person has the advantage of having extra buffs over the person who can afford less temporary buffs. This applies to things such as karma and even supplies as well, but I think the advantages to heavy-dedication should be minimal mechanically.

A person who bashes for 6 hours a day is going to gain more essence. More essence means more offerings. More offerings means more karma and more karma means more blessings. In a way, instead of seeing the staple every-demigod being equal, we'll see a "nerf" to demigods that actually pushes towards demigods being imbalanced (ceterus perabus) amongst each other.

I think a demigod should be able to get--with major essense cost-- three stat boosts in addition to some combination of refresh me, refresh power, divinefire, and seek. Ascend and shout should both be free or at least not take up demipower slots, and I'd push for zap to fall into that category as well.

For example
stat boost - 1
refresh me - 2
refresh power -2
divinefire - 3
seek -1

The first two stat boosts should be free as far as the slots are concerned. A demigod could then get divinefire, seek, and a stat; divine fire and a refresh, both refreshes and a stat, etc.

The vernal can naturally get divinefire, both refreshes, seek, and four stat boosts.

Ascendants can get the stat boosts but must balance that with the ascendancy skills.

That's going to be the issue with any essence-shop system.

It's even an issue with Demigod itself, and... well, pretty much any game mechanic, including politics.

The more time you have to invest, the better you are going to do. Skill always has an impact, but so does time. You can be the most influential politicking force ever, but if you're only logging on 30 minutes every other day people just aren't going to pay attention to you as much. That, and you aren't going to be around (most likely) when important things come up in order to state your case.

Players are already rewarded for time invested pretty much anywhere. This just gives players something to keep working for even after getting Demi.

Oh, I'm not going to argue that time-invested leads to an advantage. What I am arguing is that mechanics can minimalize the effect (see Guild Wars). As it stands, achieving demigod has been the investment of time; after you've achieved it, the only time investment required has been insuring one doesn't lose it. The temporary buffs gives a substantive advantage to those who can't contribute as much time.

Again, I'll completely agree. Anyone that logs in for 30 minutes is going to be at a disadvantage, but what shouldn't be happening is the people who can play for 6 hours a day being heavily advantaged over those that can log in for 2 or 3 hours.

Unless, of course, those people who log on for less time decide not to spend so much of their (much more) precious essence on temporary things and instead focus on getting them on a permanent basis.

Eventually the people with more time to spend will get them as well and then you'll be right, but that's already the case now in terms of things like truefavours, HME blessings, and all kinds of mechanical edges that someone who has more time to invest gets. The only way to eliminate it all-together is to provide a hard upper cap (nothing more to spend essence on) so eventually everyone gets to the same place. Not too appealing really.

Edit: In this case, it's not an infinite number; it's limited by essence income, so there still is a mechanical limit on any differences.

People who log on less shouldn't be put at any -further- mechanical disadvantages for less time investment. I'm not advocating removing time investment advantage all together--that's just ridiculous when the game was designed around it. What I am arguing against is introducing more imbalance to the game.

PvP and other forms of competition are more rewarding when the grounds are more balanced. Not everyone will agree with me in this, though. But isn't the reason people even brought up demigod issues because they feel it's unfair that the game is balanced around them? Demigods are demigods because of investment; it doesn't make sense to nerf a time-invested reward with more time-invested abilities.

I achieved demigod. I think that I should have equal footing to all other demigods all else equal. Two demigods that have no blessings, no TFs, same equipment, etc should not be differentiated based on their time investment.

Blessings and TFs are separate issue, and no, I do not wish to remove them.

You're leaving out power allotments (and / or time invested on Astral for free power), along with the time required to find and maintain supplies... "all else equal" is a pretty wide variety of things. In this case, it's allowing Demigods to buy some extra small things for themselves with investment. They can then buy some temporary things if they wish.

There's a lot more than just Blessings and TFs that are not equal here. What about lesson expenditures/ Artifacts? You state "same equipment," so why shouldn't investments in essence-shop-gear be considered equipment? Not quite sure how artifacts are valid but this wouldn't be.

Essentially, I'd prefer to have something to spend essence on to nothing. *brandish fistful of essence at you*

On the whole, giving people something to do with their essence is beneficial, imo.

Are we staying strictly with already what's been established in regards to skills for the Ascendant powers? Cause, teeny tiny greedy person that I am, I wouldn't mind seeing a choice other than Affinity for Nature. I mean, if suggestions are being made for utility (rez for essence? corpse summon?) I wouldn't mind something more apparent than...5DMP and a longer meld break eq.

I could always pull up my list of randomness from earlier on in this thread too, but choosing one (which wouldn't exactly benefit Nature unless they went Herbs) would be..odd.

What if, instead of making meld times longer, Nature gave you a flat regen amount to H/M/E when in your org's terrain?

A flat amount so it stacks on top of the regeneration (remember that org races have racial regen in their terrain, so giving a level of regen isn't so effective). Something like keeping the 5 DMP and a 500 h/m/e regen tick or something along those lines. Not sure what exactly.