Thank you for completely missing the entire point of my post.

The NMBG mindset is why he would be willing to step aside if/when the time came in favor of someone who would do more combat-wise with the skillset. The lousy thing is that after 3-4 rl years in good standing that he would have to.

You can pretend you do not understand why someone would object to having their earned e-accolades stripped unceremoniously in favor of someone who's just plain better at the PKs, but being an achiever as well as a role-player yourself, I'm fairly sure you do actually realize that this proposal is pretty lousy for the people who will be inevitably cut.

Glom is consecutively winning not because we have many VAs, but because we have the largest group of hardcore people who enjoy spending their time working for the group. We have more VAs because we already have the core people who win the villages and nodes, and stay up late to nab domoths. This is not going to change just because some of these people are stripped of VA -- unless the goal is to disenfranchise people to the point where they stop playing.

VA has been billed as the ultimate achievement within an org, something above elected positions, honors, etc. People do play with the goal of becoming VA. This proposal changes the achievement from being the paragon of org involvement to being the best active PKer at a given time, as a matter of pragmatism, and that is unfortunate.

Thank you.

I think I'm a bit too close to this. You've spelled it out much better.

I agree with Talan.

Only remove ascendance for those who gets their VA status stripped!

No matter what is decided on, I think the administration should give good consideration to the following in regards to VAs who might lose their status without any reason other than their orgs not being able to afford insane upkeep costs:

1.) Will they be forced to drop to 0 essence demigods just the same as though they abandoned their orgs entirely?

2.) Will they receive anything in exchange for the massive time/essence sink that went into learning ascendance?

Addressing either or both of these with a clear answer might help dampen some of the negativity this change will spur.

I still don't buy that we need to put the cap in at a lower number than the numbers that already exist. Logarithmic population growth + infinitely linear resource production = end of scarcity. That's an undesirable outcome. There's no problem with the current number of ascendants, though, except maybe that some orgs don't attract the talent to keep pace.

Another question worth adding in here is will villages be changed so that an org cannot hold pairs in direct competition. The idea has been bandied about a lot, and it does have a fairly significant impact on how many VAs an org can potentially maintain. If possible, it would be nice if it were addressed now, for the sake of fewer big surprises later.

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As far as the suggestion that while the skillset will be stripped, people will still maintain a special 500k power value honours line being some measure of compensation... this is a paltry thing, and it is somewhat laughable/insulting to suggest that people should just be content with this.

Most achievement positions do carry additional privileges and perks - commune, order, guild ranks, guild/commune artifacts, etc. If it was intended that there be merely a way of honouring someone, there would be a city/commune honour in the same way that there is a guild honour. If we would say to someone, "Look, everyone knows you are guild champion, it's right there in your honours! You don't need this guild artifact/pet or these gr20 privs," people would object. They have taken on the responsibility, and will desire to keep the associated perks. It's the taking away of what has already been worked for (skill in ascendance) that people are objecting to, not the lack of recognition. They already have recognition in their org, it is why they were made VA.

No I didn't. You said that having many demis at this point does not justify those people who were not demi prior to their becoming VA getting demigod. I was hoping you'd understand what I was trying to get to without me having to explicitly say it. The thing is, these people, whether they were demigods or not prior to the their becoming VA get voted for. It's the org that chose them. These people deserved getting VA, did their duty as a VA, and just because they are dormant now, it does not erase their deeds which they did in their time. You can't just say "Hey, thanks for all the years of hard work, but seeing as you're dormant and all, we've decided to strip of your VA status, your demigod status, your titan status, and chuck you right back to whichever circle you were in prior to us raising you. No hard feelings. Thanks for everything." People who lose their VA status already become demigods with 0 essence, and is vulnerable to losing demigod at their first death. And the said people who've lost VA so far (Talkan and Desitrus, to my knowledge) lost it because they left their orgs of their volition. The number one issue this mechanic is bound to face is the dormancy people fall into. IF an organization strips a dormant person of VA status, then should the person come back, they're bound to be demigods prone to losing demigod at their first death. If you say people who get stripped of their VA status also deserve to be chucked back to their circle, you're disregarding their deeds for their org and this treatment would be no different than treating someone as a tool which can be discarded at their leisure.

Which, that my books and plays brought in 1M, or that anyone could ever get ascended based on bringing in the 1M personally? I said the latter would never work. (Though I wonder... if I shopped Lendren around, maybe someone would... at least before this change!)

My point was that Ascendant is a combat-related thing because of the demigod bonuses much more than the Ascendance skill. I wasn't saying anything about who deserves what.

This, which we seem to have forgotten. As long as stripping VA lets them remain demigod this system will do very little. All you do is strip the RP and prestige from it and turn it into a bland demi-factory. This will not make Vernal something rare and special, it will just be "here are our top combatants" and nothing more. It will not solve combat imbalances, it will not solve the saturation of demis (and it's way too late for that anyway). We've thrown around "oh the sarcasm is so heavy in here," but I was absolutely no being sarcastic. I fully believe if the system goes in as planned it will turn into a cheaper way of making demigods, since that's probably a better use of power than maintaining a bunch of vernals.

That said, if we do have to strip current Vernals, a unique honours line that future Vernals will not have, a full refund of essence spent in Ascendance, and remaining demigod is the absolute least that should be done. Future Vernals we can deal with as they come.

While I don't disagree with these conclusions, I think we're too quickly tossing aside the substantial advantages in gaining domoths that ascendants have as a factor in these considerations.

I actually fully agree with Xenthos on this. I don't believe Sarra was just raised because she fought, though it helped contribute to it at the time. I feel like she was raised because of hard work, dedication, the willing to do almost anything (there are some things she didn't do) to help her org, which included fighting, was why she was raised. For her, it was a reward that enabled her to continue doing what she did, perhaps with a little more efficiency. Even with the current Vernal election going on in Seren (which is still going to happen even with this dropped on us), I tried to encourage that not just fighters should be picked, or non-demis. I'll probably still promote that even afterwards, but after I'm not leader anymore, have no idea wtf will happen to that resolution.

It really does feel like a kick in the face. I can understand some sort of upkeep, but to the point where it's punishing those who have put RL years into this, got it, and then put RL months into just ascendance alone. We can't deny it, it took millions upon millions of essence and a shitload of time to just trans ascendance, and then most VA's I know of do have a cult at this point. I have one, Nejii has one, Xenthos has one. Even Gregori and Thoros have one. That's 10 million personal essence + upkeep of having people in it, inducting people into it. All of this will be lost because someone decided they're not active enough to keep VA and so it all goes poof. All that work, gone, because some people wanted someone new and shiny.

Honestly, if I had my VA status stripped in Seren, I'd feel very angry at the org, to the point where I probably would go into complete inactivity, or find somewhere else to live. It is a slap in the face after doing so much for the status. An honour line would do nothing to placate it.

Didn't Estarra originally want one per org? Maybe the RP of 'okay you've done a lot of for the org so here's your ascendancy reward' isn't what she intended it to end up as? And RP wise limiting the amount because a drain makes more sense to me then a hard coded cap or an increasing cost.

Then it would have been quite easy to code a hard cap of one at the very beginning, and if she didn't more than a dozen vernals later is not the time to cap it without a complete overhaul.

Except it kind of is, because a good chunk of the reason she ended up going with multiple was because people were asking what to do about the 1 Ascendant who went inactive. It wasn't supposed to go away then, either.

It's not just combat-related. See Xenthos' post a page back and Sarrasri's post above.

Ascendance isn't, mostly. Demigod is. One grants the other.

I'm still not being clear enough. Becoming an ascendant is great for any combatant. It's great not because of the Ascendance skill. It's great because he can go from level whatever to demigod and get the DEMIGOD bonuses. Sure, it's great for RP, too, but I'm discussing why it's good to a combatant.