[Kal]

I think some of the more (what was considered common in spires) magic should be in tomes, like lightning and energy. Things like cosmic etc with lots of lore that /should/ be followed should stay behind applications to prevent people from just going said magic and RP'ing it improperly. There isn't much that really makes people stand out unless everyone apps, which some don't like being forced to do for arguably basic magics like lightning.

[Rod]

Like I said let's put aside the whole ' cosmic should be blah blah blah because of lore'

I chose to keep it to myself and my discord group, but cosmic application is a joke. You snowflakes defending cosmic not being public is just an attempt to keep the best tree out of such easy use.

I for one want it public simply because these fake elitest think they did something special, all the while having their advantage.

[R3N3GAD3]

I think tomes for the more advanced, non-elemental magics is actually quite fitting that it requires dev. I feel like making most of the tomes accessible will return us to the more battlechaddy meta we had back in spires and people just coming out of the woodwork with abilities out of nowhere when they hardly did any Dev for such advanced abilities. Personally, I think it's bad for the IC to allow unfiltered tome usage of more advanced magics.

Energy, is the manipulation of raw mana which requires the user to train their mana reserves to handle concentrating their raw mana into attacks and defenses. The raw amount of mana required to do this is fitting for some Dev required to do this of at least the user practicing to concentrate pure mana with meditation and focus training and figuring out how to use their mana in battle. One of the starting abilities is also a mana surge, so you can even weave that into your IC to help you Dev it. If one can't do that for a character they are supposed to have creative interest in developing, that's just lazy.

Cosmic, is the usage of star mana in which the user empowers themselves with their star in which they formed a bond with that's close enough for the star to think they are ready to use that power to greater extents. Most of the difficulty in the IC in this, is finding a creative way to to communicate with your star for the first time. After that, it's only slowly Deving your bond with the star and increasing your own strength. Again, this is pretty simple, and cosmic is a pretty powerful magic. Before Cosmic became a Tome, back in spires, I saw way too many people who used cosmic magic who didn't even involve bonding with a star in their IC. I feel like that would happen again if we made cosmic a non-app tome.

Illusion, is the usage of weaving mana into your surroundings to alter the perceptions of those around you. I'm not too well versed in its IC, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't just want people to be able to just buy it with no development, considering its abilities severely inhibit the user's opponent's abilities.

Gravity Magic, is the art of heavily compressing mana and focusing it in a certain way to manipulate gravitons around the user, a well-versed master of this magic can create Black holes that crush everything around it. Again, that's some pretty heavy advanced usage of magic, and seeing people create black holes with little proven IC development would be pretty depressing.

Time Magic, involves the user using their mana in a way to regress or accelerate phenomena, and even their own body. They can even use time on their opponent to slow their moves and make them feel as if they're decaying away. I never even went about using time magic because I didn't know how exactly I would do the IC, but I feel like it should definitely be an app/mentor only magic.
~~~~~~~~~~
These magics are so powerful, they have never even been combined with any other magics officially in the past and they still maintained a pretty high place as far as the fighting meta went, even after they were tweaked with nerfs and such. As far as the next part of this goes, I'm just going to list the magic and why I think it should be app'ed for in a shorter summary. I don't know if the Non-app tomes are going extend to the more intermediate, more advanced elemental magics too, but I'm still gonna do this.
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Metal magic: I feel like this one is self-explanatory, it's a more refined version of earth, no pun intended and very powerful. I haven't used it, but I've seen some metal moves used in combat and even fought the magic, and I must say even the IC and the mechanics of it feel like an App-only magic.

Bone magic: I haven't even seen this magic used, and it sounds way too badass to not be a hidden magic. My guess to the IC around this would be the user manipulating their bones and other people's bones, or just bones in general by infusing their mana even deeper than blood magic goes. Either way, this probably should be an app-only magic.

I think you're getting the point, any elemental magic more advanced than it's predecessor magic that has significantly different form should be app-only, so I'm just going to list them all without summary from here on out.

Crystal, Nature, Blood, Magma, Plasma, Sound.

I liked the premise of Esshar's skill trees from the moment it was even mentioned to the public before the game even came out. It makes players put actual work into their characters with a bit of Admin regulation of the IC so players aren't just coming out of nowhere with extremely powerful magics. Back in Spires, sometimes it felt like people who hardly put work into their IC were coming out on top of the battle meta just because they made their build a certain way. It kind of resulted in the battlechads ruling everything, and I still like the taste of Esshar's development system, considering in order to be a powerful battlecuck, you have to have some decent Dev backing that up.

Let's not forget what this game is about, Creative Writing and making a story that even influences the world around you in Eternia. I feel like if we made these more advanced magics available to the public, we would begin to regress back into the battlecuck meta with very little IC to back it up again. This is my opinion, so take it with a grain of salt and don't hate me for this, but I think making the tomes more widely available for Chads to plan their ultimate build without some IC regulation would suck.

On my current character, I use energy magic and I was actually okay with developing it. It wasn't that hard, it only took me a few days and only a few hours each day, and I was done and had my app posted. The very next day, it was approved and I didn't even have to wait very long. On top of that, if you don't want to go through the app process, and you're that much against it, find a mentor. Mentors literally can teach you moves straight out of their skill trees, as long as one has the RPP and prereqs for it. All you have to do is RP with them and let them teach you the magic.

Making more of the tomes available without IC regulation I feel would put a dampener on the IC of Esshar, and make it so we have more people running around with exceptional abilities with no IC dev to actually back it up. Unfortunately, by the looks of this vote, it seems like we have more in favor of the opposite of me, but I guess it's worth stating my thoughts on it to vent it now before the bullsh** racks my brain. Either way, my opinion is stated, IC is important, don't forgo IC just because people don't want to actually work  for the cooler abilities that our artists and coders worked so hard to program and make.

I'm just saying, considering much hard work was put in over the years to make this game the wonderful way it is now, and on top of that our coders and artists still work on other games at the same time as well, like Severed World, we should have at least some resolve to put some work in and develop in a cool way to unlock such cool abilities. For coders and artists to work so hard for us, and the admins who work hard to keep us satisfied as players, for us to have the desire to put no work into IC sickens me in short. I bid whoever actually took the time out to read this a good day.

(Edit: I forgot to mention, making so many of the tomes publicly available would completely defeat the purpose of mentoring. Seriously, there's players who are entrusted the mentor ability in SO MANY different magics in which they could teach just about anyone. Again, if you don't want to app, find a friggin mentor.)

[Starry]

Like I said let's put aside the whole ' cosmic should be blah blah blah because of lore'

I chose to keep it to myself and my discord group, but cosmic application is a joke. You snowflakes defending cosmic not being public is just an attempt to keep the best tree out of such easy use.

I for one want it public simply because these fake elitest think they did something special, all the while having their advantage.

I don't think the Cosmic app is about a group of elitist trying to keep the tree out of other's hands, but more so to ensure that people who do have Cosmic magic-- something viewed as pious within Esshar, at least have some background info on it and understand what exactly they're rping.

[Rod]

I can tell you with confidence of my low quality, yet very long posts, that cosmic apps do not care about lore. 

Moreso that the person with it isn't completely oblivious.

But let's be honest here, with this many cosmic users, do you think it's really that strictly graded?

I think the tree is too good for so many people to have it, and at the same time so little. It is a form of elitism for the average beggining player

[Lorelai]

Cosmic is super strong and people get denied more on affiliation than anything else from what I've seen

[Whatever]

Y'all going on about the lore importance of tomes when this shit was a retcon that did not exist for two separate games.

[Oyster.]

tomes feels like an early access build of original eternia 1, almost no one rps them and the people that do could just rp it without the item

also ironically despite being an effort to make learning magic more IC it has the opposite effect, these items appear in your inventory magically and cannot be traded or interacted with in any way

[Enginseer-42]

Y'all going on about the lore importance of tomes when this shit was a retcon that did not exist for two separate games.

Yeah, and in two separate games you'd run into people with some crazy ass mishmash of 3-4 different trees on their bar so they could stomp people into the dirt with no real coherent narrative behind it. You would just buy spells, with no bar to entry, and if they didn't quite fit into your chosen motif? Who cares they aren't hidden you don't have to RP having it.

It's not an RP decision, it's a mechanical decision. "I want this spell to win fights with."

Personally, I really want to see something where people actually focus around something.

Also, the tomes themselves might not be RP'd. But you can bet that the people who get an advanced magic certainly seem more proud of them in character. Sure, nobody's writing home about being a fire magi, but an explosion magi will be sure to tell you about it and how special they are. Same for a metal mage.

I'll agree that perhaps an admin app might not be the best way (Personally, I think it would be cool to have there be some kind of neutral 'Master' character for each element/magical archetype that just teaches people spell by spell.)

[Hoovyking]

I actually really enjoy the tome system thus far. My only complaint is that the tomes take up physical space instead of getting added to your list of learnable trees.