Well, it's up to the players, I guess. I can understand the argument of not wanting Demigod to become something that's easily achieved. It's still a lot of time doing it while aetherhunting, but perhaps it is a little fast. Granted, I do support group activities for a bit more xp than what you'd normally get on your own.

Nerfing it slightly is one thing. Making it so can't find an aetherhunt and that it's worthless even if you do is going to make me pissy that I have to trade in a skill.

The problems Akui has raised with the massive slippery slope mechanic Lusternia has with group-dependant activities is unfortunately also a factor. It looks like this will not be as much of an issue with Estarra's proposed ascendants, maybe, but just in terms of getting levels easily it is inevitably going to continue to be a factor if unaddressed.

I wonder, personally, why it matters if it's fast or if some folks think it's easy. What's the big deal? So what if, in a few years, every single player is a Demi? Why should it be that a handful of people rushed out and got it and then said, "Hey, that was too easy! But, now that I have it, let's make it harder. We don't want anyone else to have it as easy! We'd be overrun with Demi's!"

How's that fair?

I mean, personally, I can count on one hand the times I've even been in aetherspace to hunt. The only time I've ever been on Astral is during the odd Wildnodes I happen to be around for or a few times to take a novice up for the three seconds it takes them to do their Planar task. I'm about one and three-quarters of a level from level 80. It will be the first time, in my entire IRE career that I've gotten a character that far.

So, as you can see, leveling is not my big focus.

That said, the idea that someone wants it to be some crazy hard thing irks me a little.

I mean, it's bad enough that I'll never get to be an Ascendant of any kind. No org is ever going to give me 1,000,000 power, and I don't blame them. That sort of investment, you want someone who can do stuff with it and someone who won't vanish for months at a time occasionally. And, I lack the skills required to keep ahold of the staff thingie for the True Ascendancy once a year (that is, the ability to not be squished like a bug when someone so much as looks at me). So, making Demi more like that, where sure, on paper there's a chance I could get it, but in actuality? Not so much. It strikes me as a bit unfair. Especially since there are folks who got it already.

Cause, I may never reach it, but the idea that I could is great. All this, "It's too easy!" talk make me feel like the idea is being yanked away, even if that's not at all the intention.

Just like Ascendancy.

I think Akui's complaint is more of feeling shut out of the xp faucet. Aetherbashing is a group activity, and the new orgs are stretched pretty thin with lower populations of mostly alts, so aetherbashing is pretty much out. When demi essence is going to start to matter as a commodity, and when the costs of the essence shop would need to be balanced around the best xp faucet in town just to keep things in check, it's an understandable complaint. And really, why should one method be so much better than the others? I think that any group activity should give about the same xp as any other group activity. Aetherbashing doesn't need to be toned down to the level of bashing the Grey Moors, but I think a little less than massive Astral bashes would be appropriate. (Less because you can't Astral bash as long as you can aetherbash.)

I'm Gaudi and I aetherhunt regularly.

Ahh! I misunderstood the focus of the complaint then. I thought it was about getting to Demi for some reason.

I didn't get enough sleep last night so my brain has obviously stopped processing information correctly. My bad.

Well, proper aetherhunting requires an enormously expensive ship just as a baseline. Fulcrux orb, a heap of room orbs, algontherine entity, shield orb, empathic grid, three turrets, a few energy collectors, cargo hold(s), and perhaps a few of the full-on aethership artifacts... that's got to be something like 1,500-2,000 credits at least. In other words, it's a substantial investment.

On top of that, you need at least six (more like seven or eight) crew members with investments in a non-guild skill, a knowledgeable pilot, and then if someone screws up badly enough, everyone dies at the same time. It's not always easy to get a sizable crew together.

On the other hand, once you do have the ship, and once you do meet the proper crew requirements, it does seem like people can turn on a trigger system and sit back, soaking up nearly-free experience. So perhaps you have a point.

It doesn't seem like that's what people do-- that is what they do. Slivvens certainly help with that, but it's still the easiest legal auto-bash available.

There's no such thing as a 'legal' auto-bashing system - unfortunately it is very difficult to prove, so we add mechanisms - like slivven - into the mix. If slivven isn't enough, we can always add more!

I pooka afk people off modules. Hell, I left Ryboi at the entrance of Etherwilde hoping he'd get ganked when he went afk on grid. It depends on the people, really. Sure, I don't manually type in every command, but I'm paying attention to what's going on. I would hope that everyone on the ship is doing the same. Even newbies we bring on to show how it works, who can't help in the least, I talk to them and answer their questions and such and they usually stay with me instead of afking.

no matter what mechanic you add, it can be coded against by those wanting to autobash (and you really only need one coder to pass around the system). However if the intent is to cull the legitimate players that aetherbash sure add more.

Absolutely! Putting on theater productions should produce comparable xp to aetherhunting! You heard it here first.

Hey now, I wasn't talking about going completely AFK. I personally wouldn't take my eyes off the screen while aetherbashing. A lot of the commands can be automated, however, and sometimes it's practically a necessity -- siphoning while the ship is constantly in motion, for example. Combat and hunting aren't terribly different, really. You have auto-sippers, triggers to cure afflictions (which is difficult to do manually, nearly impossible in combat), and for hunting, perhaps you have a trigger to auto-attack once you've initiated battle with a denizen. For hunting, you still need to walk around, launch the initial attack, and pay attention in case something untoward happens.

IRE games are designed in a way that encourages the use of triggers and complex systems, so I don't think it's fair to blame people for doing so. Going AFK or Alt-Tabbing is a different story, but chatting, reading the news or browsing HELP files in-game while aetherhunting (and still paying attention to the action) seems perfectly acceptable to me.

Probably very infeasible, but I think it'd be cool if gunners had a targeting map, similar to the one in the Millenium Falcon, and we had to zero in on our target to shoot. Something similarly random would have to be created for the other modules, too, of course.

That'd just make it more complicated, and likely even further increase the need for good triggers. If they didn't trigger it to target automatically, it'd be a huge reduction in efficiency, while the people using triggers wouldn't be affected at all.

Even I wouldn't want to trigger an ANSI map to auto-target creatures. Macros to nudge the gun in different directions while the creature dodges around was all I was thinking. Just a fun thought I had, anyway, not a practical suggestion.

I'm not entirely certain whether or not you were replying to me, but in the event that you were, way not to even read the first sentence. I mean, even used the same word for pete's sake.




I like people getting to demi. I just think everyone should have an equally easy time of it, rather than it being another feedback-loop advantage of joining a mega org over being in a smaller org. There's nothing wrong in my mind about people getting big essence pools and quick demi, but for the risk, time, effort and cost that goes in to enabling me to, and engaging in, solo astral bashing, I feel that I should be making returns on par with random aetherspace gunner afker 123.

I also don't think that I should have to spend months whittling away at an essense pile to bring me to par with what someone with regular acess to aetherspace will have in a few good nights. Given how much more work it takes to bash normally, the reward gap shouldn't be anything like what it is. My preferred solution is to bring up the xp gain from solo bashing.



Thank you.

How about that captcha system.