Giving demigods severely circumscribed access to the pool of ascendant-only powers would be an easy way within the existing system, and without a lot of recoding, to make it so the system wasn't limited forever to one or two dozen people, without imbalancing things, and without contributing much to winning org momentum. For instance, never as supernumerary, not more than N at a time, or even at higher costs (though I think the costs are high enough as it is).

My idea is that you can change as much as you'd like within a month, but with increasing costs for each time you do it. For example, the first skill you activate might be 100k, the second 200k, the third 400k... so it will quickly get prohibitive to do a whole lot of it, but a couple here and there will use up a good chunk of essence without being 'too much' to bother with.

While we're at it, let's make KnowledgeAwareness not require Seek as a prerequisite!

Adding weight to things that are purely RP also sets bad in my mouth. Especially when demigods already had the custom shouts and zaps before the system, and I'd be willing to bet that the majority of demigods, at that time, had them. To make things worse, all of the work was focused on the VA/VD, when it was all the demigods/ascendants for the essence shop. The only thing the demigods got worthwhile was the 2nd trade skill. Veneration is a bit meh in implementation, I think.

The end game review will always be a sour point for me, as I think it's a prime example of how the admin have listening and priority issues. It wasn't what people asked for, and undeniably, a huge coding effort was put in to VAs that will see little use.

I'd support your system, although I think it's more of a bandage than anything else. And my guess is, you're asking for 100k to change skills, but it'll be something more along the lines of 1 mil+.

QFT

Yup. Havent played Acrune or bought credits since then. I'd give feedback on the system, but I have in other threads and obviously nothing came of it.

I feel like they could tweak it though and at least get it to a point where people can be happy / content with it. Instead of just leaving it as-is, which... well. I've tried to outline some of my issues with the system.

If one is worried about what would happen when lots of people have a given ability, as opposed to a few, I'd wager the problem is the ability itself.



I'll never really see eye to eye with expending so much effort for a small subset of the playerbase.



This too.



And this.



Case in point.

Here's the thing. We, as a game community want more people to play. More demigods just means that we have more long term players. Stratifying out the playerbase with things like VAs, TAs, even medallion holders, just ticks off people on the lower rungs of such a system. (i.e., jack and jill vanilla demi).

I feel that there's a fundamental flaw to the whole ascendancy system. I mean, people who get VA and TA at this point are people who would stand out anyway- they don't need to be mechanically better than the rest of the world. That's just discouraging to others.

I mean, I will never get any seal. Why? Personal qualities/flaws aside, I manage a grocery store. That means, I work my butt off every weekend. It also means my schedule is very erratic and my play times unpredictable. So even though I put in a lot of hours every week, I will, under any hypothetical situation that involves me keeping my job, never get to see a lot of content. I miss most critical events. I miss most contests. I've never even been logged on for part of a final seal event. But honestly, missing that stuff I can deal with. It comes with the territory. But essentially having to look through the department store window at fun stuff like ascendance knowing I'll never get to step inside (for a whole slew of reasons, naturally), that's not satisfying. That's just sort of obnoxious.

As someone who buys credits, this is sort of a splinter in the eye. I'm certain I'm not entirely alone in this.

Were I put in charge of everything, other than the world being amazingly perfect in every way(for me at least.) I'd tear the guts out of the system. On Akui, I've spent my demipoints on stat increases. I can't even buy both enlarge AND shrink, though I could still get one or the other. I won't get a fun second trade skill. I won't get any cool ability that we see ascendants get. I'm not alone!

So remove ascendants, except for like an honours line. Give all the ascendants back their essence, of if that's not possible, give them a metric--ton of essence. Give everyone a much higher demi-points cap, and everyone gets the same cap. Open up all the abilities for everyone.

Hell, if you want to make some money off this, let us spend credits to boost our demi-points up. I'm sure a lot of us rank-and-file demigods would love to stop feeling like the end-game under class, and have the same access to fun toys as everyone else.

But, at any rate, if it isn't painfully obvious- as a credit buyer, the system of "special little snowflakes get fun stuff you'll never have" is both discouraging and tiresome.

I definitely wouldn't be opposed to everyone having access to the current-Ascendant abilities, I think if anything the point weights are enough for any kind of desired seperation

In my ideal world, VA would be a purely-RP thing, with purely-flavor powers (and maybe, like, city marry or something). And it'd cost less, of course. The first thing I ever heard about Lusternia was the announcement of the Ascension two years ago, and when I asked around I was told 'oh, you get to be a god,' which I thought was awesome. When I got to Lusternia, I had already formulated the idea that Ascension was something you got via RP and being the paragon of your org, rather than through combat and bashing, two areas I find rather boring, personally. When I learned that neither form of Ascension was like that, I was rather disappointed. Even basic Demigod is a bashing thing, which is ok I guess. It's just boring as all hell.

tl;dr: If I was dictator of Lusternia, VA or something similar would be a way to achieve endgame through RP alone, rather than a combat-driven or bashing-driven thing.

That horse is not only out of the barn but has long since died of starvation trying to cross a nearby desert.

I don't even think the corpse remains of said poor horse, maybe a few crushed bones(dreams).

Which is why I occasionally lament it.

Unfortunately, as an RP thing, the Ascendant system didn't work out (even though Ayridion was a great individual in the role). Something that was solely a reward for roleplay, and solely a thing for roleplay, would need to be big to justify the power cost - which, at one point, it was intended to be that way (with cities being able to raise players to full-on Vernal God).

There were a lot of reasons it didn't work out, and I'll be the first to point out it was before my time - but my understanding was that it was a very lonely experience, and there's no perceivable way for the system to genuinely work. (Something I lament greatly, because I love the idea of such a system)

Were the role of a Vernal Ascendant purely roleplay, I would be willing to bet quite a sum of money that it would be rarely used - justifying a multi-million power expenditure on someone because they can give special emotes and marry people in their city would never fly, I'm sure.

As to the system itself, I'm fond of it - but I can appreciate why people disagree. There's a short-list of potential powers floating about Havens, though you're welcome to suggest more.

I'd be very happy if I had access to some, if not all, of the powers, really.

Then you should get ready for the coming Ascension Event!

Or start convincing your city/commune!

Note that Malicia, Nejii, and myself were all raised with this being the general idea...

It quickly fell by the wayside after that, but three organizations each spent a million essence for the person they felt most represented the ideals of their organization, with little thought being put into the combat side of things.

Also; a lot of people are pretty unhappy with the system right now. From a player end, it feels clunky and more like a chore / trial than anything fun or exciting. Choose something you don't like? All that essence is screwed up and gone forever. Pick something ephemeral by accident? Again, too bad! Something gets changed and you don't want it any more? Oh well.

And that's assuming you're even able to buy them to begin with... :/

I am a demigod with simple dreams - access to just to some of the domoth powers.

I just want Destruction. You guys can keep the rest. And that only to bash with.

Having alternatives doesn't always mean they're justified or realistic. "Give me your money or die" is an example of what I mean.


Not directed at Eventru:

The system favours both those who are combat heavy and able to sit on an aethership for a very very long time. Additionally, it furthers the unnecessary schism between RP and PVP.

The best thing to have done would have been to nerf -only- divinefire, as that was the change everyone specifically asked for, and given us the things that people actually wanted. New and cool things. The only reason why I picked Veneration over the second trade skill (ignoring my love for Raezon), was that I've stopped purchasing credits in any form OOC and didn't have enough lessons to trans.

Veneration seems cool, but after many months (I want to say at least six) of bashing, I finally got the 85 million to form the cult. Now I have to wait for the order and myself to fund even more essence so that I can get new skills, many of which are impractical and not worth the costs. There are some awesome ones though, which should not be forgotten.



I had all the endowments, refresh, divinefire, seek, custom shout, custom zap (not even there now), shrink, expand. Everyone had those. Avatars had resurrection.

New options: aside from the choice options for zap and shout (downgrades from the custom ones), we get enter and look messages (predefined options), predefined teleport, planar quickening (mostly useless).

The only new things worth mentioning is the second trade skill with its heavy cost and veneration, which as I've said is extremely costly and suffers from a lot of skill waste.

I suppose the new choice options would be worth something if they didn't cost points to have, but as it stands, I choose mechanical advantages over roleplay. Had I not chosen what I did, I'd be less effective as a combatant, as a basher, as anything that goes beyond standing at the nexus talking.

My two biggest complaints, however, have little to do directly about the system. This endgame review was asked by the players, but the result is far from the expectations or even ideas people had. The second one is that the administration chooses to ignore or dismiss complaints and make everything seem to be hunky-dory, when from what I see (granting that I have limited views and exposure), it's totally opposite.

The fact is, the things players have asked for, aside from the bug month, have been largely disappointing. I respect and appreciate new content, but I also appreciate the old being fixed and worthwhile as well. Problems arise, things happen, people make mistakes. I, for one, would be extremely pleased to see the administration to pause and say, "Let's fix this before we move on." Not everything needs to be extravagant and end with a bang. You can't expect to please everyone, but it also doesn't mean that everyone that disagrees is trolling.

I realize that Lusternia is a community and a business and can't make decisions based on how I feel about decisions made and what not. The reason I stopped voting for and spending money on Lusternia, however, is because my impression is that the players come second and a lot of things come across as merely a ruse to soothe the masses.

Lusternia is a great game, with excellent players and administrators and volunteers. After playing it and getting involved with it, I can't deny that fact. However, what Lusternia is and what it has potential to be, are worlds apart.