I IDEA'd this some weeks ago and I'm not being impatient by putting it on here, I just want to see if my rationale is stupid and I'm not seeing it. :)

Currently, there's a cap on essence gain at 75 million, put in during the special report to make people spend their essence and reduce hoarding. Earning essence above 75 mil incurs a malus. I talked to Lendren about it and he mentioned something along the lines of an 85% malus (said essence is cut to 1/6 of normal). He didn't say those were the exact numbers, but the numbers are not central to the matter at hand..

How does it make sense that essence gain above 75 million incurs such a malus when Veneration costs 75 mil (leaving the Demigod at 0 unless he grinds against the system, putting him at severe risk of losing Demigod, Avatar and Veneration should he die after buying it) and BeauteousThought costs 80 mil (actually requiring grinding for 5 million essence against the system to get it, if you have a Seal of Beauty or are an Ascendant)? :/

It seems to me like it's an oversight that occurred during the report, mainly because anyone who has BeauteousThought or Veneration bought it before the cap was introduced, so nobody gave it much thought. I understand that the point of the cap is to prevent hoarding, but I feel like an unintended consequence of the cap is offering things to buy but stunting the gain of currency needed to buy them, which makes no sense to me.

To solve this, unless someone points out that this is exactly how the system should work for some reason, I propose that the cap be raised to 85 million, so that a Demigod can buy even the most expensive power (80 mil), and still be allowed by the system to have 5 million in reserve, so that purchasing a power does not put him at an extreme risk of losing both Demigod and the purchased power. I would also be fine with 81 million, because 1 million reserve is just fine, but we know we like multiples of 5.

Sorry for the long-windedness of the post. I hope I got the point across. :)

This will sound dickish, and I admit I haven't read past the second paragraph, (past the part where some powers are above the caps) but I think the cap is fine. I think some people should have to work extra hard if they want benefits, meaning hunting higher than the cap.

Also, if we were to raise the cap, 85 million would need to be pushed to 90, since Demigods have to pay 85m essence to get Veneration and a Cult (unless you're fine with having to sit around for a few more days after learning Veneration before you can actually link to the God)

Either way, I think it's fine. Like I said, some things require working for and I think some of these powers should be one of them.

There's also the fact that it's not a firm percentage decrease of the essence, but rather that the more essence you have, the less you earn, starting at 75. Thus, going from 75m to 80m isn't that much harder than going from 70m to 75m. It apparently gets really noticeable when you hit 100m.

Ardmore:

This will sound dickish, and I admit I haven't read past the second paragraph, (past the part where some powers are above the caps) but I think the cap is fine. I think some people should have to work extra hard if they want benefits, meaning hunting higher than the cap.

No argument about working hard for benefits, but I feel like the game's requirement of "working hard" is represented well enough in needing to accrue 80 million essence, and there is no need to put a damper in the form of stunting essence gain like this. But we just disagree on that, I guess!

Ardmore:

Also, if we were to raise the cap, 85 million would need to be pushed to 90, since Demigods have to pay 85m essence to get Veneration and a Cult (unless you're fine with having to sit around for a few more days after learning Veneration before you can actually link to the God)

I'm perfectly fine with sitting around for a few more days. They're two separate powers/purchases, nobody is forcing you to buy them at the same time.

Ssaliss:

There's also the fact that it's not a firm percentage decrease of the essence, but rather that the more essence you have, the less you earn, starting at 75. Thus, going from 75m to 80m isn't that much harder than going from 70m to 75m. It apparently gets really noticeable when you hit 100m.

I suspected this might be the case. That's a fine point, and I guess it's okay in practice if you can bash to 85 mil just fine in spite of the malus, but it doesn't change the core of my argument, which is that you shouldn't be forced to work against the system (or the system shouldn't be working against you) in trying to reach/buy/achieve something offered by the game as-is. I know this might sound counterintuitive, as many goals are only reachable by working against the system in some way or another, but I hope you're getting my point of this being a special case where you're told that the goal is 80 mil essence, but after 75 the system starts punishing you for wanting to get 80 mil.

It's a pretty small malus, though eventually it does get pretty harsh. Eventually it gets to the point where, no matter what you kill, you'll get 1 essence per critter.

For my part, when we discussed the cap, I was intimately aware that Veneration would fall just at the cap. I don't really mind the notion of people having to grind a bit beyond it to feel comfortable, and the same for BeauteousThought. The high essence cost is meant for them to be hard to attain. Slightly harder now, but I don't think XP is difficult to come by, with people making Demigod within a matter of weeks from essentially nothing.

I understand. :) I guess it doesn't hurt much if the malus is sane in the beginning, and it's true that exp/essence is easy to come by. I still, on principle, disagree with a 75 mil cap when the costliest power is 80 mil, but it's fine if the cap isn't as limiting as I thought in practice.

Thanks for considering and thank you to everyone who replied!

Out of curiosity, Eventru: How big would the malus be at, say, 85m?

As neither a Demigod, nor someone who will be ascended (likely ever), I feel comfortable in saying that not having essence prices over the soft essence cap seems pretty reasonable...

Ssaliss:

Out of curiosity, Eventru: How big would the malus be at, say, 85m?

I don't really remember, would need to ask someone whose essence is near there. As I recall the malus doesn't actually start until 76M - something like -x% per 1M for every 1M over 75M, recursively. So Veneration isn't actually affected, just BeauteousThought. Which, given it's a third tradeskill, its cost is perfectly suitable.

Sounds good, but feel free to accidentally Office Space typo the decimal point a few places. 1 essence, formerly 0 essence, per critter makes sustaining oh so fun.

2,050,000 kills to recover from one enemy territory death.

50,000 kills to recover from one lich in non-enemy-territory.

Fun times.

Have you bought (ephemerally) all the powers accessible by you yet? Getting down to a more reasonable essence total will make sustaining far more feasible.

I feel like missing the obvious. Why is there a cap to begin with? Also cap lower than certain skills seems wrong.

There is a soft cap at 75 million, with essence gain after that being reduced. There is a cap because Estarra doesn't like people stockpiling essence and it lying there, unused. The idea is that, if you're discouraged from earning more than the cap, you'd be forced (or, rather, encouraged) to use the essence.

As to why Estarra cares whether people have 500 million or 50 million essence, you'd have to ask her, unless there's someone here with the insight. :)

Brahms:

As to why Estarra cares whether people have 500 million or 50 million essence, you'd have to ask her, unless there's someone here with the insight. :)

I THINK she believes that the cap makes enemy territory deaths matter more, since with the cap you actually lose a noticeable percentage of your essence. Not sure it works, since I don't think anyone will keep fighting after a dozen odd deaths, regardless of essence totals, and if they do, then they are obviously willing to bash it back anyways,

I wish the other three quarters of the suggested changes went through, cheapening/adjusting the costs of various powers to make more sense /shrug.

@Brahms
We did ask! Many times!
In talks with Estarra, she said (paraphrasing here) that she was worried that having so much essence was making people not care about deaths and that they felt the need to balance the costs of new powers against the totals of those top few people with very high amounts. Personally, I think that both of these objections are odd, as I've sat at a pretty 15mil essence for my entire demigod carreer and deaths mean nothing to me there and the thought of balancing around huge stockpiles seems moot when those people are obviously able/willing to stock up essence and bash for it and will buy those powers quickly anyways. /shrug(Again)

The "caring more about enemy territory deaths" thing didn't cross my mind. It's arguable how much of an actual effect the cap has on that, since people who have tons of essence to lose are clearly very capable of getting more whenever they want, but that's irrelevant now. Bygones.

As for lowering the costs, it was very funny to me to read Estarra's comment that, if anything, she'd raise the costs, because what else are you going to do with the essence. I understand it completely, I'd just (selfishly, I know it's a lot of work) like more powers to spend essence on rather than more expensive ones. :P Was probably a joke though. /unfunnyidiot

Anyway. I really feel like the powers system now is fabulous, especially compared to the old one. All I'd want now is for the cap to be raised (blah blah, said it all before) and more demipowers. I have faith the latter will come in good time, and as for the former, well, this attempt was a flop, but no biggie. :P

Thanks for all the input, everyone!

Right, thanks for clearing that up, makes sense now. I do still think the cap should be above the most expensive power + some room for buffer.