As Product Manager Wyrom noted his in Creating Adventure (
https://gswiki.play.net/Creating_Adventure_-_March_2020), we are making some dramatic changes to how Development works going forward. A big part of that change is how we will communicate and engage players. Up until this point, we always held back any details of what we were working on or hoped to work on in the near future. A lot of that was due to situations were something was announced as an intention, then failed to come to fruition, due to any number of reasons. I hope that it's perfectly clear that things we're willing to discuss going forward are strictly goals and not promises. Having said that, I think this approach is better than not announcing any details until something is going out the door. I'd much rather Development work with players to refine ideas and consider all viewpoints during the design phase than after we've spent a considerable amount of time designing and implementing something. With that in mind, this is what we have in the plan for the Ascension system.
The Ascension system will be Post-Cap Development, but it will not be restricted to level 100 characters. A lot of the exact details are still being worked out, such as the mechanism to earn points, so any or all of this could change. However, the current plan is for you to earn experience through your normal hunting grounds. That experience can then be diverted into a special pool for Ascension Training Points (ATPs) that that are then spent to unlock a number of passive and active abilities. It will function very similar to the Combat Maneuver List (CML) system.
There are 3 tiers of abilities: Common, Elite, and Legendary. The Common abilities are intended to be very generic and apply to things that most characters might be interested in. It includes things like boosts to stats, skills, resistances, etc. Just those 3 different areas represent 71 different abilities, since each stat/skill/damage type is a separate ability. Elite abilities are designed for certain builds and character types (such as Squares, Semis, Pures, archers, locksmiths, etc). It includes things like rapid health/mana/stamina/spirit regeneration, elemental arrows for archers, locksmiths detecting traps when being handed a box, etc. Finally, Legendary abilities are designed for specific abilities/spells and usually tailored to a specific profession. It includes things like Rangers being able to tame one of each animal companion type (and separate ability to temporarily summon them all in combat), Warriors being able to manually stop a Berserk, Bards being able to create higher enchant sonic armaments, double attacks/spells, etc.
Characters will be required to invest a certain amount of points into the Common tier before they can access the Elite tier. They will then also be required to invest a certain amount of points into the Elite tier before they can access the Legendary tier. The abilities in each tier will get more expensive to unlock as the power those abilities represent grows. In addition, we intend to have a lot of chained abilities to promote certain builds. Some abilities may be exclusive of each other (so if you learn X, you can't learn Y).
Right now, we're spending a lot of time brainstorming the different abilities that will exist in this system and we're very interested in your thoughts and ideas. We're mostly just after ideas, so feel free to respond with anything you can think of. Rough concepts are okay. Development will work out most of the actual numbers and restrictions to keep everything in check.
GameMaster Estild
Official: Ascension
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Originally Posted by Ardwen
