By that logic, I would be fine if the admin refunded me days of my life back, as well. Make it so.

Nevertheless, help a (demi) brother out.

I feel that IRE in general makes a strong effort to ensure that people don't get hoodwinked when it comes to credits, lessons, artifacts, or anything related to real-money transactions.

If it's something that you can't buy with money, however — something that can only be achieved in-game — they're not afraid to be cavalier about taking away whatever they feel is necessary to serve a broader purpose. This is still a very rare occurrence, although Lusternia is in a stage where it's hard reality, what with both the comm changes and these end-game changes taking place at approximately the same time.

Note that this isn't meant a criticism of IRE, simply my own personal observation... and overall, I feel it's still a pretty positive way of doing things. It just sucks sometimes when they have to revamp stuff involving in-game accumulation and effort.

If only....

Also, I'm fairly certain that the point of not giving a full essence refund is to keep you from buying up too many things at once. The reason for that could be
A. The admins want some time before end-gamers start breathing down their necks about more content.
B. The admins want time to field test the update, making sure nothing is bugged in some ungodly way.
C. The admins hate you and want you to have to grind the essence back.
D. The admins love you and want you to grind the essence back, making sure that you'll be there for them.

in b4 someone posts

There are people already with several hundred million essence. The only difference here appears to be that the reduced essence had already been invested in Ascendancy. If the problem is "people buying up too many things at once", this will not solve it.

I'm sitting on at least 100 million essence right now as well.

Crazy people like the top 3 on rankings xp have in excess of 200 million essence. I am fairly confident those guys (and probably even me) will probably be able to get whatever we feel is 'essential', but we still would like our investment back.

In short, I agree with Esano.

One of Eventru's earlier posts implies that they're doing this because, you know, we told them to.

The number we tossed around concerning refunds, back in that thread, was '1/3 of your essence', and so they made it so. We just didn't think it through, back then, and I really doubt it's anything else at this point. Probably just a eccentric strain of fan dumb, if you will.

Oh man did we say that? Quotes or it didn't happen.

In the event that's true, well then, don't we look dumb.

I claim amnesia dust.

It's not really true, no. I followed that thread very carefully, even though I was quite new at the time (and still am, really) — the 1/3 refund people were tossing around was supposed to be an essence refund to persons losing their Ascendancy skillset and reverting to Demigod.

What's happening here is different. Even persons who are True Ascendants or who retain their status as Vernal Ascendants after all these changes are going to lose essence, for uh, some reason... apparently. Right?

Which is what the great majority of us will be doing... so I guess there's a little bit of truth to that.

We won't be reverting to demigod, we'll be changing to ascendant reject, and given that there'll be a cap that varies based on immortality tier along with the essence cost, we don't need a differential in the latter to separate us out.

actualy it sounds like you do go back to demigod, but you also get the vernal title. However it sounds like you go back to phoenixing and no more reforming. as well as the possibility of losing demi. That's what earlier Eventru posts seemed to imply.

I actually can see some justification for getting a little less than 100% back since you have been using the skill all along, but getting only 1/3 back does seem pretty darned harsh. But I especially feel for those who got promoted from demigod (Nejii, Thoros, and Iasmos, any others?) who already took a similarly arbitrary-and-unjustifiable 1/3 cut in their essence and will now be taking a second one.

Well, maybe they changed this, but in the last thread it was decided that there would be a cap of something like 5 points of permanent demipowers for demis, 10 for ascendant rejects and 15 from VAs.

lrn2read?

it was reposted but the system Estarra last mentioned considering was, as Shiri posted, that "Vernals" would have twice as many sparks or the like as demi, as well as being able to have one domoth power (at the time they were saying only one power per domoth).

So sure... you could lose it but you are not really just a demigod anymore

There's like, six people sitting on "several hundred" million essence.

I'm not really sure where the 33% came from - I'm fairly certain it came from the previous thread's discussion, when the topic was brought up and someone suggested either 33% or a partial refund or something, with complaints of a full refund meaning +120m essence flushed into the system, etc etc. 33% was suggested at some point by someone and was simply what was used. (Yes, we saved the previous numbers so we can fix the refund).

We moved up to larger numbers (50/75/100) so that we could have more leeway in assigning weight.

If you leave your city/org you will lose the Vernal status, even if you're a retired Vernal - the thought being that, although much of the power has been stripped from you, you still hold a small link with the domotheos of your nexus through which you had been raised.

And everything except the ability to form cults has a weight. Even the customization stuff has a weight value (though it's pretty low), so if you choose to go all-combat, you won't be able to access any of the fun flavourization (new word!).

And an Ascendant won't really have access to a everything there is - most of the Ascendant stuff is weighted heavily, so they have to pick and choose there as well. Though True Ascendants will have an advantage in that regard.

As to why the jump in initial cost, I believe it was in response to suggestions that 50% refund was too much for ascendants, and 1m power is surprisingly easy to come by (well, not 'omg so simplez' but there's, what, 7m worth of power floating about in Glomdoring alone in the shape of Ascendants from the past 3 years, so).

/fixed