And here I thought I was alone in thinking that.

I agree with this totally, as I said, if it's done right, this can be awesome, what I didn't say was if it was done wrong, it would be absolutely horrible but I have faith in the admin's ability to listen to the forum zerg

I really want to stress the importance of not throwing tantrums over the forums, it's pretty disheartening to other players and admins. If you have problems, voice them, but do it in a way that doesn't scream 'OMG RAGEQUIT'.

I really want to plug in my suggestion of making ephemeral powers (the temp) cost 0 essence but double their weight, this way, you get the benefits of new demis getting the chance to participate in the cool new system, giving them incentive to buy the powers for real, and give the old demis a chance to 'test drive' certain skills.

Re: Demigods - I am pretty sure the admin are busy trying to give the demis more neat things to play with, but bear in mind, they have to juggle this with fixing bugs, adding other content, general morale, etc.

P.S. Bump

P.P.S. I am totally down with admin commenting on those ideas too.

I thought weigth was only for permanent skills and ephemeral can be rented for a game year even if you used all your points.

Well that's why it's a suggestion, heh. I'd like it to do that instead of what we have right now.

Man! So much upset. First thing waking up, and I can say that misery loves company. I woke up and it's 63 degrees in my bedroom - and 85 outside. That's fahrenheit mind, but I sort of expected my dog's water bowl to be frozen through. (I'm glad it wasn't.) Apparently the lightning storm yesterday fried the very sensitive thermostat on this newfangled eco-friendly power-saving A/C unit (that comes with a right neat LCD touch screen with a remote I can carry around the house - yum! My ginseng tea is fantastic this morning, thank you for asking.

Chuckled? Good. Glad we're all enjoying my misery too.

Now - deep breath - relax. Goosfraba. Yes, eskimo sex.

Fantastic. Anyways. I'm a bit surprised that we always go through with this, every time. For whatever reason players have developed this opinion that the administration is full of a bunch of either ignorant yuppies or steadfast sadists who enjoy seeing people miserable.

When there's a system like this and we've little vested interest in things that are, in the macro perspective, pretty unimportant - things like essence costs, weights, things of that nature, but are important to you, as a player, on a micro perspective - and there's a general consensus that something of this nature is 'too much', we're happy to consider lowering it. Some of you really are acting like we've taken the dog out back and done gone all Travis Coates on him! I'm pretty confident that everything will work out and everyone will be, at least relatively, happy. I realize not everyone can be pleased (thankfully! What else would I have to read on these early morning wake-ups if I didn't have you guys complaining vigourously about something?!), but I'd like to think we're all going to do as best we can to get this system to work and leave everyone feeling good.

One thing to remember is that, for some of us, we've been coding a lot lately to get this finished. (Actually, I can tell you that, for some reason, Ubuntu hates Veneration. It deleted the entire file a total of three times - once I had to start from scratch all over again, and twice I lost days of work, but at least I had a backup!) So taking a day or two to, in the words of Anna Nalick, 'just breathe' is fantastic. I'm sure essence costs and weights will be adjusted, I'm pretty sure everyone's going to be happy with the end result, and I'm obstinate in my belief that every last one of you is going to send me some god damn milk and cookies come Christmas, you're so happy. (Please don't mail before December 21st. And don't mail me milk, please. Yuck, weirdos.)

That's not to say we're 'sitting on our thumbs'. We're going over things, we're discussing, and we're looking at what needs adjusting. I'm pretty sure we're all fans of 'one fell swoop's, or at least as few swoops as possible, instead of 'trickling changes over a few days/weeks'. I know we're all listening to the complaints, and I think it's safe to say that some of the essence costs and weights are in for a change. (I say some because I don't see the tradeskill slot prices going down.)

So can we relax?

I still have a couple questions that I don't think have been answered:

• If someone spends essence and maxes out their weight values but then loses their status as a VA, VD, or DG, how do the powers get removed to account for the new lower weight maximum? Is it random? Does the player get a grace period to choose? Are they all removed and then need to be repurchased?
• If we purchase a power and the price is later adjusted, will there be an essence adjustment to all those who purchased it? That is, are you keeping records on how much each individual spends per power and/or is the administration planning to adjust the essence of each player (either up or down) as the prices change?

And, thank you for responding to the primary concerns. Your cottage cheese and biscotti should arrive shortly.

I love that song!

Also agree with everything else he said (to make this post less off-topic). I encourage everyone to go to the Ideas for Powers topic and try to think of something (even aspiring Demigods - these are things you'll get to have). It really is hard finding the golden mean between useless and too much, and avoiding duplicating the effects of artifacts.

Cottage cheese? Gross.

Biscotti? Hot damn. Estarra doesn't give me biscotti. I might make some today, now that you've said it.

As to the rest of it, I'm not really sure. We can see what we can do and what we've got to work with.

I think the majority of the upset players and hard feelings comes from.. Well, this isn't exactly the essence shop that was in mind. Sure divinefire is stupid, remove it so people die when they are supposed to (it was fine to do it for the first 99 levels right?), give the demigods with several hundred million essence something to spend it on to make their character more rp snazzy- not strip everything away that made demigod worth getting and only allow a demigod the ability to buy not even 1/4 of what they had back for a ridiculous cost.

I don't know if this is 100% true, so if we could get some sort of confirmation that'd be cool, but I hear that while veneration costs 75mil essence, it takes another 10mil essence to form a cult, then 120mil essence to trans the veneration/cult skillset and if that's the case, I'm rather upset that the cult I had was taken away AND the skillset with the cult skills in it was taken away and essence only partially refunded so not only do I need to pay a larger initial cost than the orignal cost, I still need to bash up at least 2/3rds the essence I already bashed up for a cult in the first place


full refund for ascendant essence please


edit: while this may not be entirely true (I heard it through the grapevine), even if it's partially true, it's still makes the essence refund a larger kick in the junk

Ascendant cults and Veneration cults are very different, aside from probably four or so abilities that carried over. Cults couldn't be converted because of some basic setup stuff, so they were removed. And Ascendance was quite a bit more than a 'skillset with the cult skills', and we both know it.

I know it had more than just cult skills( I didn't say differently -and- I do know that most the cult skills were higher up in the ascendance skillset), but it had cult skills, it was 120mil essence to trans out and making an entire new skillset with new cult skills that costs that much essence to trans AGAIN means that in order to get another cult and use it effectively and to it's most potential is now going to cost me a grand total of the original 120mil + the 10mil to form it originally - 40mil(the refund) + an addition 205 million essence(total cost of the new cult) which means I'll have spent 295million essence by the time all is said and done. That's not even including essence spent to get any of the new shiny powers and such. So after I get back to any sort of state that I -was- already in, I'll have spent over 300million essence.

This being said, I'm sure there are super cool new skills in the veneration skillset that didn't exist before, but I still think a full essence refund for ascendants would be appropiate considering it now costs 85mil just to use veneration and form a cult(based on previous statement) to begin with (that's pretty much the difference between the refund we got and a full refund).

Also, I do still like everything in general, I just feel, as I think most people do, that a full essence refund would go a long way, it's definitely akin to refunding lessons spent in Magic when that was taken away.

I am dumbfounded by the illusion people have that essence is an easy, easy, easy thing to come by. I mean, yes, a serious aetherbashing during the weekend can net 10 million essence. But the majority of Lusternia's playerbase do not have the luxury of having every weekend free to abash. Time in Lusternia is divided across many things (plays, quests, guild activities, organization activites, etc.); not everyone lounges on an aethership 24/7.

This is also a huge kick to the ex-Ascendants. Getting to Demigod is equivalent to 120,000,000 essence. Transcending Ascendancy (skillset) cost 120,000,000 essence. Basically, Ascendants had to re-bash to Demigod to be able to Trans (and therefore be max potential). Returning just a fraction of that 120 million is, well...painful.

OK, I've been a little busy the last few days so I haven't had a chance to read through all this yet and am catching up. But, Acrune gave two different 'pick from a list' options and Estarra basically just said, 'yes, you pick from a list' without saying which it is!

So, which is it?

Please tell me it's the second one. Where you can make up your own. The one goal I have in reaching Demi is being able to do the custom stuff and if it's not even really custom, I'm gonna be very sad.

Now, I'm gonna go back and continue reading through the pages of this thread (where someone has prolly already asked this very question! )

You can pick from a list of preset options, but you can also set custom variants, though these will cost more essence/weight.

Oh please, considering you come from the org that was churning out demi's left and right on the aether express, many of whom came to the forums gloating about the awesome aetherhunts Glomdoring always has that churns out demis, you are in no position to even consider the "oh poor me essence is so hard to come by" angle.

Unfortunately there's 117 demigod+ currently active. Right now we allow custom shouts and custom zaps, both of which require approval. Before we stopped approving them, we had more than a dozen approvals sitting in the queue. That's just too much as-is for approving. Adding in enter/exit, look, teleport... It's just way too much. Sorry.

There's 27 options, 3 designed around each domoth. So there's a lot of choices, but you cannot write your own.

But, you're not going to take away the custom zaps and shouts, right? Right?

No. It is more costly than a preset zap/shout, however, just to encourage people to buy the preset ones (so we have less approving to do and more coding/building/biscotti making time)