I think they suggested putting Portals into the Cult-skills.

I don't really know what will be going into Cults right now. There's kind of a big question-mark as to what will be taken over to it, what will be added, etc. We haven't heard any real solid ideas for a conflict system (actually, don't think we really have heard any) or some means of competition between cults (inter-org? Cross-org? Inter-order? Could be open enough to encourage two cults to the same god to clash, though I can't envision how that might work!).

We're definitely still looking for/open to ideas for cult rituals, bonuses cults might have, etcetera.

I think that it'd be interesting if the cults' arpee potential could be extended to villages, especially now that village feelings have come into play. What if cults could sway a village towards favouring a deity somehow? No idea how to tie it in since village influence spheres would leave some people open to being killed if they stepped on to try and 'cult-ize' the denizens.

What benefits would stem from that? No idea, but thinking about random Shanthmark people going 'zomgz, Viravain, I swoon 4 u' is dandy in my mind.

I still think it would be cool (if we had enough Avatars and thus cults) to use actual Cults instead for each path in the order. I know Maylea has three, I don't know about any of the others gods, really.

^That too would be dandy.

I once had an idea involving cult rituals being limited to being doable only within the Godrealm, and some system involving raising obelisks in areas to 'claim' it, and only one cult can claim an area. Obelisks could be 'disabled' for a period of time (a cult ritual that was more powerful based on the number of cultists in the room with the Avatar, so you could attack an obelisk once per IG day dealing x % damage, the obelisk recovers passively, the ritual might take 3-5 minutes to fire, avatar is extra vulnerable to attack so you'd want to clear the area), and once disabled they'd stay disabled for a bit (RL day? 10-15 hours?) and once you disabled all the obelisks, you could attack the cult's shrine in the godrealm (initiate a godwar or something, maybe?) and if the attacker 'won', they would gain an item they could use to convert one of said cult's obelisks that were disabled (so there could only be x amount of obelisks, one per area, with a ritual to build one if an area doesn't have one for an ungodly high amount of cult essence).

I don't really know how it would play out in practice, though, and it was just kind of a flippant suggestion. Maybe it will give you all ideas to run with!

The point being, obelisks would allow you to use cult powers in that area.

If we continue upon Sylphas' idea of creating a special influencing skill for those within orders, why not have order duels based around influence. First group to reach a set amount get a reward of sorts?

So...

Every area would have an object of control.
Have to survive for 3-5 minutes in a group.
Have to disable all objects within one day.
Attack the shrine.


In practice we would probably find that as soon as the first one is created per cult it would be contested as soon as possible by every other cult out there. Particularly strong pvp cults could likely steam roll others and gain a large collection of obelisks in a short amount of time without having to invest. This could possibly be aided by other cults attacking the obelisks prior to the primary cult.

hrm, perhaps the avatar should have to invest essence in some point of the claiming of another obelisk? The more obelisks they own the more difficult it would be to create or claim another, which would encourage avatars to pick their obelisks carefully.
That and/or the more obelisks you have the more spread out your essence becomes, the thinner it is, the weaker the obelisks are. So... maybe one of one obelisks has 100% health, one of five only has 20%?

Oh, also if this could happen in any zone I would suggest specifying a location that the obelisk will appear or have them there just hidden if not bound to a specific avatar.

^^^

Can we avoid trying to unbalance influence anymore please. Cults do not need to influence villages, the villagefeelings with greathouses will already greatly effect how that works.

Short notes:
Dont punish demigods for being demigods, leave them what they are but maybe add somewhere for them to progress too, buying into a cult of their own, or taking up a Seal with essence.

I have a list of people ready to leave lusty if their hard work is turned to having to bash for a year to get back to where they are now.

Lots of rumors and speculations going around, is there any word on what exactly the power cost might be to upkeep Ascendants or anything else that is being thought of?

My concern is still what they're taking away, and if they're basing these costs on aetherbashing, or what someone without access to it can manage.

Because that's a night-and-day difference, and it's obnoxious enough sliding ranks while working harder and with more risk than someone firing triggers on a turret.

If we're going through with this, I'd like to see some serious improvements to the rewards for solo bashing, because right now, the changes are saying "work many times harder to get a fraction as far! awesome."

Aetherbashing needs to be fixed. I can tell you that it easily unbalances the system of getting demigod and gaining essence. Make it far less influential and make slivvens worth gold to someone. I solo bashed demigod, the fact I have to work for anything next to the aether whores just kind of feels like a punk out. Work for demigod or you really dont need it.

P.S. A summary of what is going in would be nice so we know how much we have to afk aetherbash to get what we already have that we now have to pay for.



Note: Yes, I did strike it without doing an edit. Its my way of a joke that is mostly true for many. Although I do find aetherbashing to be a grand time to work on forms, bardics, etc.

I can say with complete certainty we are happy to listen to any ideas that are made now or when the changes are finished and released, ideas that are focused on offering more 'abilities', 'benefits', what have you. One thing I really like about the system is that we can add more to what exists without greatly overpowering demigods (unless the ability is, itself, overpowered).

I don't begrudge the gains people make so much as that I'm very concerned the system will be designed around said gains. I mean, what orgs with a strong, organized aetherbashing system can do in a few good nights, can easily take me months of soloing on astral.

So when they say "we're taking your abilities! You can buy them back with essence!", people with access to high essence gains say "oh yay, essence shop!". People without get to bash for a possibly obscene amount of time to get back what they have now. The discrepency is, ultimately, a "(edited out not profane but probably "meh" description of the situation here, born of frustration and a bad connection tonight that's making it hard to do anything of note)."

It isn't even lack of initiative. It's lack of resouces at this point. Gaudi could, at one point, unreliably field a decent aethercrew and ship, but due to inactivities and people forgetting aethercraft for their own reasons, we can't even do that.

So I have to ask myself, why should I twist in the wind when the alternatives are so dramatically more profitable, and far less risky, and far, far, far, faster, and even less intensive in terms of behind the keyboard effort.

So, since some people already have a massive essence bank (which they shouldn't be punished for), if we aren't going to improve the gains significantly for traditional bashing, then could we at least gift existing demis with enough essence to buy what they want?

In the interests of equity if nothing else.

Slivvens are worth gold to someone (I think someone in the Facility), unless they removed it. It was active for a while after the slivven-infestation at the Peak though.

Girda from inside the Starhopper will buy them now. They won't give you extra exp or karma on turn in... but you do get 100 sovereigns per corpse.

It's kind of funny that people begrudge aetherbashing as a way to get Demi. When, before that, it was influencing. Before then, it was astral hunting. People will find a way to quickly get xp to Demi. Regardless of whether you keep aetherbashing the way it is nor not.

I hope you're kidding. 15 Million for 15 days? That's impossible to maintain.

Edit: It's taken me one month just to get up to 15 million.

It doesn't really work like that. When there are XP exploits that need to be patched you can't just sweep it under the rug and say "well, people will find another one anyway." They have to be coded in! Or not coded out. And the time-experience ratio is a valid factor in these discussions, even if you think it should always be as high as in aetherspace's case (or old Astral zerging's place.)