The team met last night and finalized some additional details regarding Ascension, which I’m now opening up for player discussion.

* A character can’t participate in the Ascension system until level 20. After that point, they can divert a percent of their normal experience toward Ascension experience at the rate of 1 percent per level (e.g. 20% at level 20, 50% at level 50, and 100% at level 100).
* Characters will be able to earn milestone Ascension Training Points (ATPs) for completing certain activities, in addition to earning ATPs by converting a certain amount of field experience to Ascension experience. Our goal is that the average character will easily earn 10 ATPs by level 100, with an additional 5 or so ATPs being possible for more dedicated characters. As an example, you might be able to earn 1 milestone ATP per 20 levels earned on your character. When possible, any credit for these activities will be retroactively applied.
* Characters will earn 1 ATP per 50,000 Ascension experience earned.
* Common abilities, which include +stat/skill/resists, act as enhancives, that stack with enhancive items, but are not subject to the enhancive limit and require no recharging.
* Each rank of +stat ability is +1 stat, not bonus. Each +skill rank is +1 skill bonus. Each +resist is +1% resist, but resist items and abilities do not stack and only use the largest bonus from all categories.
* The first 5 ranks of each +stat/skill/resist Common ability will cost 1 ATP each. Every 5 ranks after that, the cost increases by +1 ATP. As such, it will require approximately 9 million Ascension experience just to reach rank 40 in any one individual Common ability, and there are over 70 of them.

Please keep in mind, this system is mainly intended for post-cap development and to ensure longevity in the game. It’s our goal that no character should ever maximize every ability, or even more than a handful of them. In addition, this represents just the Common abilities. The Elite and Legendary will potentially be significantly more expensive, but also more impactful and character defining. Lastly, once we have most of this system in place, we hope to introduce new post-capped hunting grounds that are significantly more difficult, but offer greater rewards for the effort (more Ascension experience and treasure) compared to existing options. Let us know what you think!

GameMaster Estild

Looks good and well balanced.

So I guess I'll start.

If I am understanding properly, 50K per ATP, 500K = 10 ATP and we're carefully differentiating between experience and 'Ascension experience'.

I understand this to mean there will not be a 1:1 mapping of experience to 'Ascension experience'. This seems buttressed by the 'means to earn Ascension experience' comment.

Just at a glance, given that a character could post level 50 put 50% of EXP to AXP (yep, I did that), and 50% of EXP from level 50 to cap = 2,506,249 EXP, we're talking something on the order of a 5 EXP to 1 AXP ratio?

Of course, that is maths. . .

Doug

I think one of the reasons we wont see 'forever free instant migration' would be its too easy to go up to say, +40 in a stat to complete a difficult enchant or ensorcell then re-spec right back into normal mode or hunt more or whatever. And while there is definitely value in being able to have a way to re-spec ascension points, making it free forever all the time is probably not wise.

As for the proposal itself, I like it. Again, I'll repeat, these common elements 100% do not excite me. But I recognize plenty of people like the stat increases and such. Im hoping the 'WOW!' will come in the elite and legendary tiers :) The gains itself seem cool, and the milestones...well, it'll be nice! Im hoping the milestones will be quite varied too.

Top 10 milestone ideas! Note: No repeats. Its not EACH time you hit these things, but the first time only.

Gain 1 ATP...
1. once you reach 1000 deaths!
2. for doing 1000 loresongs!
3. if you reach level 50 with less than 10 deaths!
4. for picking 1000 boxes!
5. for getting 100 unique RPA nominations (adjust this for shattered/plat)!
6. for raising 100 unique people from the dead!
7. for participating/having a major role in a cool storyline!
8. for burning down 100 warcamps!
9. for using 10000 spirit towards CoL abilities!
10. for your highest foe defeated being over 110!

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AuchandToday at 11:28 PM
I would like to reiterate: Whick is my hero.

What is love? BB don't hurt me05/13/2020
Whick's so helpful! He's our villain even in our backchannel chatter as staff. :smile:

A couple of trackable milestones that all classes have access to:
- 1AP per million bounty points earned
- 1AP for every twenty levels (as a nod to those who’ve been grinding exp without much useful skills for years prior, make this uncapped and use total exp Ie ~21m exp would be level 201)
- 1AP for mastering forging/artisan/instrument skill
- 1AP for being a master in a society

I really hope that my post-cap Warrior, who doesn't hunt a lot, can still reap a lot of the benefits of Ascension points. And perhaps have the option to invest the Experience from meeting goals of maxing out certain skills into Ascension skills via a FIXSKILL perhaps.

- R-man/Hammerr'

This all sounds like a solid design, at least for parts you've shared with us. Really really glad to hear that the enhancive ascencions will not be subject to the normal +40/+50 limits. I'm already swimming through the possibilities of what I'd boost first.

I'd love to see it take a somewhat less ascension experience to gain a point. The most famous slog for postcap pures is 50k exp per dodge rank, which always seemed to me like a way of saying "you're not actually supposed to do this, but if you insist, go ahead, weirdo". Ascension is supposed to be a thing that more than just the most masochistic enjoy pursuing (I think?) 50k ascension exp for a point of, say, AGI stat seems at least as brutal as 50k per dodge rank. And that's only the introductory price - it doubles after the first 5!

Or scale more gently. For example, 10k per ATP, 5 ATP per common rank (no change so far). But at 5 rank intervals, it scales to 6/7/8/9/10/etc points. Even that awful dodge slog has the courtesy to not scale over the course of 101 ranks!

Alternatively, I'd like to still gain 20% normal experience when gaining full ascension experience (and vice versa). Maybe just after cap?

Various musings as they come to me: https://gswiki.play.net/Leafiara/Ascension_Considerations

Of course, this might totally blow up once the Elite tier is out, but hey. :D

There's no way a new character has an advantage.

You still have to level that new character and as B pointed out you won't be devoting much experience towards ATPs. A capped character will earn far more ATP at a faster rate compared to any other character level 80 or lower.

As I gaze over the horizon, the wind tugs at my cloak and whispers, "Adventure" in my ear.

A squeaky halfling nearby asks, "Why you playing with orcs heads and troll rearends?!"

>For the recently capped, this might be a hard choice. There are still a great number of skills that while not 'core' would still be highly useful to get.

Agreed, there's definitely going to be some interesting things going about. Perhaps a Silverwood Manor get-together about this system, how it interacts with normal exp/TP's, and how a character of just about any level can maximize what they want out of each (exp/ATP) system, while still getting what they want out of the other system(s).

As a 'recently' capped (aka, 8.5mil exp. currently), my paladin will probably go 50-50, at least until I get the rest of her core/wanted skills maxed out. Then, I'll probably move it up to 75ATP-25EXP, just so I have a few normal TP's to play with, while also going affter aTP's.

~Cylnthia Kythnis Ardenai
~Paragon of Kuon
~Rose Guardian, House Sylvanfair

I agree i think postcap skills are still more valuable than ascension from what I understand. +1 stat is such a tiny impact to me.

Skills still have much more bang for your buck in impacting what your character can do.

"With max allocation to ATPs, starting at level 20, a newly capped character would reach 90 ATPs. That should make like-level hunting significantly easier for that character on the way to cap (though at the expense of taking 6% longer to cap)." -- Greminty

I believe there to be a significant problem with your math, because a 99th level character using 'max allocation' would be putting 99% of experience gained into AXP, and before that would have been doing 98% at 98th, and so on down.
That sounds like WAY more than a mere 6% increase in time.

Had you figured it at "20% from 20th level on up", even that sounds a bit off. (Because the first 19 levels have such a puny experience requirement.)

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Without doing any math whatsoever, I would believe "+60%" time as a possible ballpark figure, but I suspect it's even higher.

.

With that said, I think that there is a good possibility of Epic and Legendary Ascension options being... pretty tasty for such a character. :)

>That sounds like WAY more than a mere 6% increase in time.

Sorry, you're right. I both misread my math (I had 60%, not 6%), and calculated it wrong as well. You'd need 4.5m extra experience (60% more) to cap if you don't account for the fact that you're diverting exp to ATPs, not just adding a percentage of it. As you point out, at level 99, if you have 99% allocated to ATPs, it's going to take 100x more experience to cap, which would be 11.25m experience alone just to get from 99 to 100, most of which would go to ATP's. So nevermind, my math is very wrong as you suspected.

That seems a lot more... I'm not going to say 'reasonable', because 44.5M is what I might call "one &%#@(*&@#ing long time" to spend, but hey, that really would be a pile of usable points.

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"Probably not something most people would do. Though it does let you spend much more of your total play time in non-capped hunting areas, if you're an "it's all about the journey" type." -- Greminty

Or if there are hunting areas that you are just ALL about thrashing and showing the error of their ways.

Krakii was pretty much designed to take on Kral Warfarers. After she aged out of those, I was kind of at a loss.

The Bard had just stupid amounts of fun in the high 30s/mid 40s, dealing with swarms up in the Sheruvian Monastery. I would have loved to spend more time there, and diverting 30-40% of experience over to another goal would have extended that by a lot.
70%+ by the time he got up to Treekin in the Red Forest would have been good, too.

"Without a very specific goal of a legendary Ascension" -- Menos

Elite: Lucky Caster (you roll 1 +d99, so no more 'FUMBLE' casts)
and
Legendary: Double Cast (every 30s, a single-target spell gets cast twice for no +mana and no +RT)

I can see this being VERY powerful for warding casters, from pretty much "whatever level they get it at" onwards.

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Now if I can just finish up my T5 Sigil Staff, and get the double-cast flare from that too....

Krakii, no doubt there are many powerful abilities being suggested. I just meant it would have to be something very Central to my view of that character, otherwise I would just wait until post Cap for the big push.

Sweet is the sound of the pouring rain,
And the stream that falls from the hill to plain.
Better than rain or rippling brook,
Is a mug of beer inside this Took.

Wonder what the breakeven for using ATPs to boost logic would be...

You'd need 15 ATPs (750k exp) to get to logic + 10, which would give you +1 exp/pulse in town. Let's call that an average of say 3% increase on all the rest of your experience after that point. So, it would take you 25m more experience to justify that investment. Not great. That's worst case though; if you're closer to the threshold, you might only need 5 ATPs, say, so it'd only take ~8m more experience to pay it off...

So, "as much experience again, as to cap in the first place."

But everything after that is pure gravy! :)

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<flee!>

I tend to agree with not allowing access to Ascension until at least cap. I do find it weird that this system is supposedly to breathe some life into the grind that is the post-cap game, but that we will have access to it at level 20. It potentially creates a whole new game pre-cap, which seems interesting in theory.

Where I think it breaks down is the fact that our player base tends to exploit every system that exists in unintended ways. So do you want to deal with those situations for every character/creature/hunting ground from 20-cap? I think just managing this at cap will be a pretty substantial endeavor, especially if the plan is to add new Ascension specific hunting grounds.

Any chance we can have either a fixskill reset or a temporary period of fast skill migration when ascension is released? :D

(Talking about traditional skills, not ascension ones, since many will want to tweak things around as things like lore thresholds change, and how much tweaking depends on how many milestone ATPs there are, etc.)

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https://gswiki.play.net/Leafiara