Who here has deleted a character because you were having difficulty getting in contact with an Imm for religion, and roughly how many chars?

I'm willing to bet any priest player has done it at least once. I know I've done it at least five times, I'm leaning towards six but I can't recall the sixth one. Specifically:

A Shokai shaman
An Eryndorial druid
A Thror Paladin
A Guerric Paladin
An Amaranthe druid

As a side question, how many times have you gotten past 30 hours without empowerment? For me its been four times not including those above. So in total, empowerment has been annoying for at least 9 of my chars, and considering I don't roll many chars that's a significant portion.

Honestly, I think the numbers quoted are absurd because my five chars listed above would never have even shown up on them. Likewise, the system does as well as it does because people work the system, not because the system works. People pick Imms they know for sure are around.

I have twice, but it wasn't unexpected. Once I was looking for dormant Guerric, and the other time I tried to play a Pico healer with a total misunderstanding of Chaos according to Pico.

Other than that I have been empowered by Shokai in less than 10 hours and empowered by Pico in less than 20.

None. Think the longest I had to wait for empowerment was ~20 hours, but I was mostly playing late-night/early morning at the time and the imm (I think it was Zulgh) wasn't on at those times. So I hopped on during his times and got empowered. Now if you had a poll on how many characters I've deleted within say twenty hours of empowerment, I'd probably say a dozen or so. My only thought for you on this is if you have such a big problem with empowerment, don't play empowerment classes and be quiet about it already.

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I have had three successful empowerments.

Boltthrower Healer (Boltthrower deleted or left, no further interaction, 25 hours)
Pico Druid (Best empowerment and interaction evvva!; randomly at level 14, maybe 10 hours)
Deception/New Spider God Druid (I got inducted and uninducted (because not empowered, heh) from a cabal in the time it took me to get empowered because I was not empowered, almost 30 hours. Got empowered, ever heard from her again in almost 350 hours)

I have had unsuccessful (deleted out of frustration, either because no empowerment, or no second empowerment for a very long time):

Cyradia Druid (No contact over almost 35 hours, deleted)
Scarabaeus Shaman (Semi empowered, Scarabaeus left the staff, deleted)

And On a different level although, I have had difficulty getting in contact with immortals who are my patron (sphere) for attempts at tattooes, etc. with every single one of my characters. This unfortunately has reflected upon the whole idea of dealing with empowerment is that if its this difficult just to get to do an introduction, its not worth the time and effort where it would directly affect my fun and time with the character. The concept of having to constantly return also disheartened me, because usually it was difficult enough to meet once.

Its just not my cup of tea I guess. I would love to play them but its just too time consuming and too much of a time sink.

Druid of Lust,
Healer Passion (Andaren),
Druid of Music,

At least one other healer, and a paladin (I think of Raisa), (of course, even after empowerment I lost interest before Level 25 =( )

Again though, I'm stubborn. I'm fairly sure Celebeleni was about 30 hours before empowerment. The druid of Lust might have been, too. Empowerment is supposed to be a challenge though. If empowerment was easy, everyone would be playing paladins. =P

But, odd enough for a player, I've always been a supporter of the empowerment system. It generally weeds out the complete PK twits and forces an RP element for everyone who's interested.

- Tharena the Silver-Tongued Songbird, Royal Crier of Darsylon

Tried playing Cyradia healer once - that went down in flames, as expected, but she didn't make me wait to find out the bad news at least!!

Other than that, I love the empowerment classes, I've played them all and had great experiences with the imms about them. Hell, last empowerment character I rolled up the imm came to me to empower me before I even prayed for them. Awesome.

All told I've had 5 fantastic empowerments out of six tries, and honestly, like I said, the one failure was my fault. I've only played this mud not quite a year, my first character was a shaman who got fully empowered and granted shrine access despite the obvious fact that I was super newb.

I don't think it's fair to complain about having a hard time getting empowered. You might have just been unlucky to not be able to play the same times as the imms you want to follow. You might be the guy who needs to play Cyradia healer and has a bad time of it because you play something off the wall that the imm can't justify empowering because of their religion RP. While some of the imms seem harder to follow than others, for the most part they seem to understand that this is a game and that empowerment is supposed to add to the fun of it, not take it away.

You might have just been unlucky to not be able to play the same times as the imms you want to follow.

That's the flaw in the system I'm referring to.

Yes, and that sucks, but at the same time that's why imms post their general playing hours. They do TRY and take steps to help the players out with this. If you don't play at Shok o'clock, then you shouldn't play a Shokai empoweree. It seems pretty simple.

Rather than invite a "I never get empowered cause I'm always ignored" flame war, maybe you should try and be constructive and ask more imms to open up forms and post their approx playing hours and general religion guidelines. Now that I think about it, it would be really helpful for the imms to anchor a continually updated post on ask an immortal or gameplay that listed this information.

I'm not a big empowerment player. Truth be told, I've empowered two - one Sebeok and one Bria. I felt alot better about the First one, but that's history. I've spent tons of hours trying to get empowered, also. I had a healer under Raisa that uhh, realized that DURING the seeking of empowerment, she deleted. So I tried Selric next. Mistake. I've tried my hand at some good and some stupid ones. I find that alot of the time I agree with Balrahd - if the imm is around, it always leads to a good thing. If they're not, though, it always sucks. For me, at least.

But.

If Imms start posting their exact play times I think I'll stop playing CF altogether. I get bothered by how many empowerment characters there are already running around. It's supposed to be a HUGE reward. How can people actually expect to get empowered because they want to play an empowerment character. You should earn it. The further problem is that once an empoweree knows when their immortal is dormant, they can assume with an extra 45% reliability that they're getting less if not no attention from above at the time, and can do whatever the hell they want. Imms used to not post times at all for this reason. I think a general range is ok to post. "I'm most frequently on at night and I live in Denmark" would be really helpful to people without giving them leeway to act a fool with an elven paladin. That may even be too much information.

I do, however, have a solution. Instead of asking immortals to post their hours, send them a message on the forums site. Tell them that you want to run an empowerment character and ask if there's a good time next week that they would want to interview you. Then you know a single good time to catch them, and there's always the likelihood that you're being observed. You get empowerment (or a shot at it) and they get a follower if they want one. I don't think the immortals have to fix your problem of not getting empowered. If you can't find an imm whose religion is flagged active, try a note. If note doesn't work, try an email. You've still wasted a minor fraction of the time that it would take to develop an invoker, so who cares, right? And uhh, I'm pretty sure the help files cover what to do when frustration occurs and how to go about empowerment.

2c, take it or leave it.

I agree, it'd be stupid for imms to say, You can pray for me from 8-10:30 central time every thursday night. But a lot of them have a general range on their forums. A general range would be perfect. Since not all imms have forums or that info posted on their forums, it'd just be helpful.

I didn't really know empowerment was supposed to be a huge reward.

>Yes, and that sucks, but at the same time that's why imms post their general playing hours. They do TRY and take steps to help the players out with this. If you don't play at Shok o'clock, then you shouldn't play a Shokai empoweree. It seems pretty simple.

Not all immortals do, most don't reply to emails you send them regarding empowerment either. Some do, it all depends on the imm in question. I don't even know what "Shok-o'clock" is. I couldn't tell you when half the imms empowered.

>Rather than invite a "I never get empowered cause I'm always ignored" flame war

First of all, thats not the situation. My post is "Empowerment is not a good system because it contains the potential to go long periods of time waiting in a room for an Imm to show up." Obviously I get empowered, I'm not exactly a stranger to the priest classes.

>, maybe you should try and be constructive and ask more imms to open up forms and post their approx playing hours and general religion guidelines. Now that I think about it, it would be really helpful for the imms to anchor a continually updated post on ask an immortal or gameplay that listed this information.

It would be. What I want to know is why it'd break the game to have empowerment start at say, 20, or have some alternative means to get empowered to 20 or 25. Personally, I wouldn't mind waiting for empowerment at level 20 if I could have level 20 skills, for non-paladin priests you don't even have parry until you get to the late teens.

So before you complain that I'm starting some sort of flame war, bear in mind I'm suggesting a very simple, non-overpowered thing. I just get annoyed when I see posts by the imms stating its average for people to get empowered by the time they get past the description room in the academy because its a load of crap.

That's one reason why I don't play empowerment classes. You come up with this great idea, put in work into a role and description and then it's a crap shoot whether you ever get empowered. My experience is as follows.

Deleted due to no response:

2 Shokai Paladins
Zulhinlour Shaman
Cyrdia Shaman
Sebeok Druid
Griffon dude Paladin

Ones that I got empowered with:

Uller Druid
Velkurah Paladin

It's way to hit or miss and that just sucks. Add in the retarded partial empowerment and it's even worse. I doubt I'll ever play an empowerment class again unless it's an Innis or Eshval follower.

Nepenthe Shaman.
I deleted a Nepenthe shaman 6-7 years ago after going without answer for 12 hours. Not really a long time, but just the frustration/paranoia of not receiving any answer, at all, was enough. Of course, this was my first experience with empowerment - I've learned a few things since then.. I hope :P The main thing I learned was to actually send the Immortal an IC note. So overall, it was a positive experience.

Balgrimnr Shaman
Balgrimnr turned down one of my characters seeking empowerment with a really nice and constructive OOC in-game note at about 10 hours (after I'd sent him a note) re: my character's name and why it would diminish his religion to have someone with my name running around (Ravn). He also read my role and pointed out one or two things for my next shot at empowerment. Overall, it was a positive experience.

I admit that I am a bit "gun shy" of empowerment - the thought that my character's progression is in someone else's hands is disturbing - it's like when you take a test, and then have to wait four months to know the results; four months compared to your whole life is nothing, but it sure does seem to last FOREVER while you're living them and waiting. Empowerment works the same because the handful of hours you wait are nothing compared to how many hours you'll actually play the character, but it seems to last FOREVER while you're waiting on an Immortal to answer. That being said, all of my experiences with empowerment thus far have been generally positive.

My advice to anyone that is waiting upwards of 15 hours (which I've NEVER had to wait until, even when I was seeking Shokai) is to send an IC note telling the IMM what you've been doing every three days, keep praying twice every log-ing, and once you hit 15, start including the "Immortals of HONOR/(Insert your sphere here)" in your IC Notes. When you do this, the note will go to all the Immortals, and might trigger one to give you an empowerment. You can still seek the IMM of your choice after this for a tattoo or something, I'm sure.

http://forums.carrionfields.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=6&topic_id=6527&mesg_id=6527&page=

The only thing that has changed since then is that we're getting to priests faster. Other than that, I don't think there's anything new worth beating this horse over.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

My point is that posts stating this happens to less than 1% of people is absolutely absurd. Either there's some invisible playerbase that constitutes the 99% majority or we should stop pretending like it never happens.

That includes the stats you were providing, which don't reflect people who delete out of frustration or auto.

Check out Balrahd's post above about his first attempt at empowerment and with your experience with newbie playerbases doesn't it seem like thats one thing turning away players that doesn't meet the cost vs reward ratio?

I'm not saying do away with empowerment, I'm saying cut down on the 'long silence'.

Check out Balrahd's post above about his first attempt at empowerment and with your experience with newbie playerbases doesn't it seem like thats one thing turning away players that doesn't meet the cost vs reward ratio?

Empowerment classes are not for newbies.
Empowerment classes are not for newbies.
Empowerment classes are not for newbies.

We have disclaimers during character generation and in helpfiles to that effect. We discourage newbies who ask if it's a good idea to try early in their CF career.

This isn't an issue where the "Think of the children newbies!" card can be played.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

You think telling a newbie that the shiny sexy Paladin class isn't a good choice is going to stop him?

I'd say 98% of newbies start with either an elf-something, a drow necro, or some sort of paladin. Disclaimer or not, who wants their first char to be a human sword spec warrior?

I'll do so again.

One Shokai paladin -was empowered at 50 hours and after a complete loss of desire to play the paladin.

One Honor paladin....

Several Zulgh shamans - not mentioned before because of the sheer stupidity of even trying to make a zulgh follower.

One Storm druid....

No empowerement character I've ever played has been empowered under 20 hours, and I've only been empowered *maybe* three times. (I can specifically remember 2) I avoid the bandwagon religions for the same reasons I avoid bandwagoning cabal wars... it just doesn't interest me. I refuse to work the system, perhaps thats my problem, but then if I wanted to play Eshval follower number #367 (no offense here, I think the religion is pimp) I'm sure the numbers would be lower.

** Several Zulgh shamans - not mentioned before because of the sheer stupidity of even trying to make a zulgh follower.


Why is it stupid to make a Zulgh Follower?

it seems that trying to follow one of the main coder gods (Valguarnera Sebeok, Zulghinlour, or Nepenthe/Drokalanatym ) is difficult/stupid in that when they are spending time on CF, it's to code, fix bugs/typos, administrate forums, perform implementor duties, etc etc etc etc. So they are hard to find in-game. I've personally been seeing Zulg on tons lately, though...