To be fair, Rika, I've had a 145% experience bonus almost constantly for the past two weeks, more for the double experience weekend. Also, Inagin has been out abashing far more often than I have (see weekranks), you just don't notice his gain because he is already at the top.

Not sure why people would want to nerf shockwaves, since every hunt I've been on (dragons, tendrils, gargantuans, elementals), uses them to actually hunt and not die. So that would probably just end abashing altogether.

They are only a requirement for dragons and tendrils. They are used for convenience with gargantuans and elementals.

I would agree if they hadn't introduced insanity upon other planes to discourage long raids.

How I wish I could be omniscient.

I'd settle for omnipotent.

With the rate of experience gain obtainable in aetherspace, I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing.

Aye. Also, I'd be up on astral constantly if the nodes weren't always drained. I check as soon as I log in and am planning on sticking around for a bit, but the past couple of weeks it's been next to impossible to find an undrained node. Even tried scorpions and parasites, and I hate those. I don't mind astral insanity because the bashing is much better than that of UV for me, and the last time I was in Muud wasn't pretty. ("Push the boil!" "Ohgodnononono!")

People are keeping astral drained to prevent someone from flooding a part of it before the ascension event.

I'm always mixed on Aetherbashing.

PROS:
I'm much more likely to have a "traditional" area to myself.
It is archetype neutral in terms of speed for the most part.
It gets people to interact a bit, however numbly and mechanically
It can be a source of org pride that doesn't involve standing on the face of another org that in all likelyhood, at that point in time at least, can't even defend itself.

CONS:
Its gain grossly outstrips the much more costly, risky, and attention intensive traditional methods.
It can be done by any twit with a trigger passed out in a puddle of their own fluids (and, as above, more effectively than a solo basher).
It can be hard to hold some meetings/interactions when 3/4ths of your org is floating around in outerspace shooting fantasy space monsters.
People get angsty (sometimes rightly so) over who gets turret slots, etc.
Associations with violations in automation.
People dumping a lot of lessons into Aethercraft to the exclusion of skills that aren't only useful for one tiny facet of the game.
The potential for clique problems/exclusion, in a case where it, for some, seems like the only good option, time/gain wise, for xp.

Overall, I feel is a good and fun addition to things. If I could change anything, I would make the gain equal to, say, a monk or knight soloing over time- it would thus have the same gain without the risks/costs/issues of solo bashing, and thus still be superior- just not so grossly so.


EDIT: and NO to astral linked mobs dropping gold. If you want to trainwreck the gold economy more than it is, go ahead. But that would dump a gross amount of gold into the hands of a relatively few people and play havok with anything approximating price stability in pretty short order.

This. I would not be adverse to it being *slightly* better, but the current rate just encourages people to aetherhunt too much. The point about interactions irks me as much as the experience. I feel like a significant portion of the game aren't even playing Lusternia anymore. They're playing sit in an aethership and get free experience.

It is a huge gain, but I'd disagree that aetherspace is less costly. I've probably spent more on five rooms in an aethership than I have on normal curatives used up through bashing the entire time I've played the game. Plus, the ships I have been on for hunts (Methrenton's Hammer, Ilosia, Gambit, Yantra) all have at least some artifacts, so that ups the cost a bit. While not everyone on the ship is paying, at least one person has paid a good deal to get that aetherhunt running.

That's just one person though. Some larger org ships have used city credits to purchase module upgrades- so the cost doesn't always fall upon individual players. I agree with most of Akui's points.

Don't worry, that's not going to happen. The older players might remember how much gold astral used to pour into the game back when it was the only way to really bash and there was no astral insanity. People would just spend all day up there bashing and generating gold.

At least there's some sort of chatter and social interaction when you ahunt. I often get a laugh out of Hallifax trips. Influencing (which you do solo and doesn't make sense to ever do in groups) and bashing (usually solo as well) are boring as . You're not really playing anything.

The only difference is that on an aetherhunt you have SHIPT, which can easily be replicated by using squads or a clan.

What's crazy is how "fast" aetherhunting is and it still takes longer to hit the level cap than WoW does.

Maybe the problem is more an outdated gameplay design decision to supplement lack of actual gameplay with a tedious, exorbitant amount of grinding. Maybe regular hunting just needs a serious buff. Hitting the level cap in an MMO shouldn't be a rare occurrence - it should just take long enough to be rewarding when you do (as long as you're having fun along the way). And the fact is that levelling in WoW is more fun than a text game since you're doing constantly changing quests and seeing new areas.

Maybe this need to supplement gameplay was once needed in Lusternia. I feel like it probably is still needed in the other IRE games. But we have so much more to do here than grind, let people get to the level cap (relatively) quickly, and get on with the fun parts of the game, of which there are plenty.

And for people still moping over the fact that back in their day there were only a handful of demigods...you're going to have to let that nostalgia go. Those days are already done. If you really need to feel that way, take a look at VA's and TA's. There's only a handful of those in the game, they are the new rare of breed of character.

In theory yes. It's hard to find good hunting spots and Halli doesn't have the strongest hunters, so squads are a rare occurrence unless I want to spend an hour to get 2% in a midbie place. Same with clans, they're not particularly bouncing off the walls with social interaction, and all my slots are filled up.

Anyway, 1-2 hour ahunts seem all right for the set up they require. For those massively longer hunts, aetherwill was supposed to take care of that however there are still several ways to get around it easily. So maybe look at that.

If you are caught afk while aetherhunting, you can expect Administration to present harsh penalties. Up to and including permanent character shrubbing.

nodes are drained currently due to Ascension coming up, nobody likes being linked out

What exactly does that mean? I've always been curious.