Personally, I was hoping for some group powers, but that is neither here nor there.

My big concern at the moment is for people like my friend, who despite being active and valued, just isn't going to have the time to hop on aether hunts. It reminds me a lot of economic models. They look really great on paper, mathmatically gorgeous, but when implemented, it turns out they didn't take in to account the realities of the world.

In addition, I'm certain I'm not alone in feeling that, well, lets put it like this:

Ascendant: "Woo! Look at all these awesome changes. They sure put in a lot of effort, look at all these great domoth abilities. I'll break down walls, and heal my group, or all sorts of stuff! I even get some for free! Stellar."

Demi: "Sorry, but could you keep it down? I'm trying to decide what I can afford to lose."

While TAs and VAs earn what they have to a greater or lesser degree, for most of us, they're just not accessible. To widen a gulf like that is going to be disheartening to Jane and Joe Lusternia, just on principle. While I'm fully aware that you want Ascendants to be special, there's a balancing act here, and someone's hucking beer cans at the high wire walker.

The ideas are conceptually wonderful, and I appreciate that a lot of sacrifices in time and effort were made to push this forward. My lament here is the same as it was months ago- it feels like a crusade born of a small portion of the player base, that bore fruits primarily enjoyed by a small portion of the playerbase, often at the expense of the rest of it. Obviously, that would never be the intent. All the admins that I've had cause to deal with, even in a negative sense, always left me with the impression that they care a great deal about the game. But that seems the emotional impression that this leaves.

Also 10 million essence to get a skill that is hardly used anyways just by transing planar? That was one of the "oh look new shiny demi powers!" you guys came up with? Seriously?

I'm just confused on when aetherbashing stopped being an exception to a rule. It gave us extra experience because you had to put together a group, needed to work together, and had to deal with far more factors then normal bashing. It also had to be nerfed once for giving too much xp and its still had the argument it gives too much. When did it become what we are using to balance things around?

Yeah. I haven't been on an aetherhunt in ages now (aside from the short one Halli set up). It's not something that's done at will, unfortunately...

I aetherbashed for over 4 hours last night and this morning. My net essence gain was around 250k an hour cause I spent most of it on a siphon. Not everyone makes 1,000,000 an hour, and even when I was on turret I was only getting about 600k an hour. My total gain for the night was 2.5 million.

We can certainly look at some group abilities! Suggest them in that other thread. I realize Demigods were going to be less than before, but a lot of people held complaints that they were a near requirement for most people to get into combat, etcetera etcetera. Similarly it lessens the argument that 'demigod is just Ascendants without the alright skillset, we've no reason to raise them'. I realize that's probably not the most desirable thing to hear, but, looking back, it's an observation I made a few minutes ago.

We can definitely look at lowering the essence costs, as I think both Estarra and I have said.

As I said, I'm happy to listen to new ideas for abilities to give demigods that 'oo new stuff' feel. As I've said, the system was open-ended and lets us add to it as time goes on when new ideas come up.

And do try to watch your tone (looking at you, Gregori!), please. I'm happy to be responsive and full of answers, but my interests wane when people are being purposefully offensive for the sake of expressing their agitation.

I am fine with demigods only having 50 points in weight if you remove the weight cost on roleplay skills. Also seek costing 20 points is a bit steep. I mean sure it's a scry with no planar limitation, but honestly, I think I used seek once in my whole time as two demigods. Everyone has access to scrying skills and 90% of the time that's all you need.

Alright! That's a pretty reasonable post. We can look at lessening (though I'm not really fond of removing) the weights. Seek's cost can be adjusted too. Like I said though, we want to let things settle for more than a couple hours before making changes (there's bugs we need to address first, too). I also suggesting taking them to the other thread (more likely to be noticed!)

Not really, when you can forgo some of the ascendant powers to regain the vary powers people seemed to complain the most about.

But if you do that, you're foregoing the Ascendant skills that people used (or complained) about the most.

Fearaura, 50.
Destruction, 50.
Aegis, 50.

Ohm take those three, or drop one of those to gain DivineFire and something else.

At which point you've still lost the rest of the Demi stuff that the Demis have lost.

Doesn't really change that they've made this stuff have such a high weight specifically for the reason you seem to be stating (the higher spread).

About 250-300K, if you are a warrior or a monk hitting astral/muud solo.

As a guardian I can do 100 - 150k an hour on non aetherspace.

I think making changes based on "well those people over there do this nonstop, and make that much an hour" while the majority of people fall in the "not those people over there" crowd is the wrong way to have gone with this.

Maybe if they had said "those people make 1 million an hour, but not everyone is those people, so let's halve the costs, because those people over there can afford everything regardless, but we want these people over here to be able to afford it too" would have been a much more realistic and customer friendly way of handling this whole thing.

As an aside, the very thought of "now I have to bash harder so I can compete on a level playing field with those who will be raiding my org" fills me with the "ugh, I think imma log off and go to bed" feeling. (note: this isn't a lolrageqq feeling, it's a "man.. I don't feel like bashing constantly feeling")

In addition to what Gregori is saying-

It would have been better to say, base prices about what someone falling within one standard deviation from the mean would be able to purchase at the implementation of this. Or even nothing so detailed. Just look at the lay out of who has how much essence, and chop off the top 5-10% of outliers. While considering outliers is important for some things, stuff like this, their inclusion seems fairly inappropriate.

Hasn't this just widened that gap, though, and made everything all the more difficult?

Now, when they do get demi, they're going to have to get divinefire first (60 seconds of near-invulnerability and freedom to escape = necessary for group combat) and then spend those remaining 20 points to do... well, something. Meanwhile, Vernals and Ascendants on high get to skip happily through our flower gardens.

(Or rather, some of us still didn't get a full/semi-full refund and still can't do any flower skipping. We can just stare at the roses.)

The full/semi-refund isn't enough to buy much. I think people at trans got 30 million or so. So you could get divinefire, but you're not really skipping through the roses.

Of course, new demis will have a horrendous time of it. They start off with 300k, lose 500k minimum if they die in enemy territory, drop to titan +66% if they lose demi, presumably lose all their supernumerary powers even if they later regain demi....

Can Gift be bumped down to 500 - 1,000 essence per room used instead of the current 10,000, please? Reaching 100 rooms replanted (for 1,000,000 essence) is fair daunting to even consider using the skill much.

Also a slight mini-bump to a Harvest change that'd be worthwhile that I've posted about in other threads.

Can I please just buy essence or powers with credits? I'm only going to be earning about 200k essence per day, on average, so after another couple years, I might be close to maxing out my points.