How is it that imms decide to give players rewards? Is it upon a whim? Are there some fixed criteria? Is it decided by committee? There was some silly conspiracy chatter on some post I skimmed a few days ago...

I think it would be interesting if there was an actual game mechanism that decided this. Imms would be given points for various things done by their followers. It might vary based upon the religion, but things like donations at a shrine, pks of enemies, quests, number and activity of followers. Imms could also be given points, that would accumulate over time, just for existing.

What they could do with this points would be entirely up to them. They could grant edges, skills or stat bonuses, give blessings or maybe even directly affect Thera. Whatever they want. They would be their points to give to their followers(or anyone else) or use in any way they chose.

This follows how I imagine a mythical religion would work. The strength of a faith, and the power of the imm, would be decided by what mortals did. Imms would be rewarded for attracting mortals, making them active and getting them to do what the imm wanted.

I think it would make the game more interesting for everyone.

I think this would be a fun competitive bent to having followers, but it is not an ideal way to cap rewards.

One thing I noticed in the last couple years as a heroimm is that the most influential factor to in game rewards is playtimes. The wizlist is pretty accurate when used as a limitation on your expectations. The second influential factor in my opinion is religion - the religious folks are already getting rewarded more than their non-religious counterparts. I think the reason is obvious: it's easier to take note of a character that is actively seeking you out. I'm not sure what's to gain by expanding that divide and providing an incentive to reward your own followers over other characters.

I used to get disappointed when I'd have some awesome defense or raid and didn't get acknowledged. And I'd be seething with jealousy over IMM-attention seekers. Well, having seen a couple of these awesome PKs from an outside pov, it's like watching a pk with a familiar - a bunch of text is flying by and you don't feel the same level of immediacy or excitement. In short, there is a reason why certain characters are often rewarded, and it's not some nefarious, ill-defined player-centric culture. It's that these types of rewarded characters are actively seeking out imms with their same playtimes. Why reinforce that dynamic to the exclusion of mortals like mine? :)

Rewards would only get capped when there were too many people worshiping the same religion at the same time. If there were 15 scarabs online at the same time there would be very few things that anyone could do that someone else wasn't already doing or hadn't already done. Aside from just making sense this way, it would work for game balance.

On the other hand, the guy who is around when there are fewer players and their god is offline has one more thing they can do. It adds another objective to the game. For him, there is noone crowding him out.

The intention is to encourage mortals to follow religions and RP. I suspect that some people(me) that avoid religions would be more inclined if things were a tad more measurable. It would also be a way to start the ball rolling in a right direction for characters who may not focus on RP. If you follow a religion, work for the religion, and some imm shows up and starts emoting and creating an atmosphere, how will you react? Good RP leads to more good RP.

I understand your concern, but I don't see it being a problem. As always, the devil is in the details. How would something like this be implemented? Add a reputation meter for a characters sphere or god? A hard point system for actions just like edges? Points going directly to the god?

The problem with this is that it's really unfair to the more active imms who draw the biggest followings simply because they're there. For example, right now there are 27 empowered characters. 10 of them are mine. Is it fair to cap the rewards simply because of that? I don't think so.

Capping has very negative connotation. It would have to be a very extreme situation for something like that to kick in such as when the balance is shifted completely to one side. And it wouldn't actually hurt your religion, it would just mean that it is as powerful as it can get at that very moment. Just at that time nothing can be done to increase the power so no actions can be taken that would reward your god with points. It is your goal to achieve that state so you would probably have the most power of any religion. You would be getting the most out of this system.

You guys are imms, and when the imms agree on something there's no reason why you can't reward any player entirely separate of this system. But a God's points would be theirs to use in any way. You can heap a reward upon a player. But there are other options. Maybe Enlilth would use his points to bring a plague upon the lands, literally.(I would find it funny as hell, and would give points to a god that would do this.) You might just grant sanctuary to a follower before a big fight. It becomes a game for you guys too but doing all these things uses up your points.

It absolutely should not hurt you or your follower's experience in any way. My goal would be a net positive. One of the reasons people may follow your religion is because you are active. A religion point game might give less active imms a reason to play more and in turn draw a few players from you. But overall I would expect more players to follow more religions. Overall I am confident it would be a net positive.

No. A lot of the rewards I give out have nothing to do with the requirements you posted. I rewarded some random person today because they had quality emotes and a nice description. This character is not a follower of mine, and I had never watched them previously to that. That being said, it wasn't on a whim (just because). There's also things like Herald events which I give rewards to a good number of people. That's pretty specific to me, however, a similar claim could be made about any quest event or even the rites. In short, it is not something you can easily measure.

That being said there is some policing. I can guarantee if I gave 1 character 1000 xp everyday for a week that it would quickly be noticed and other imms would want to know what sort of drugs I was on.

>This follows how I imagine a mythical religion would work. The
>strength of a faith, and the power of the imm, would be
>decided by what mortals did. Imms would be rewarded for
>attracting mortals, making them active and getting them to do
>what the imm wanted.
>
>I think it would make the game more interesting for everyone.

This sounds like a fun game (and there are some like this) but in CF it would have some big problems I think. The biggest is just that some religions are more flexible than others. What this means is that a religions like Neltouda's or Iunna's can accommodate pretty much any race/class/align. Whereas religions like Scarabaeous's or Baerinika's requires a pretty specific mindset approach. And the way things are now, it's cool that some religions are rarer than others. But if we start rewarding followers based on how many other followers the god has, then you'll quickly find that everybody just shoots for one of the religions that can handle the widest variety of roles.

And this wouldn't do anything to reduce inequality of rewards. You'd just have people griping that Iunna gave this guy who obviously sucks a bunch of rewards and didn't give me, who obviously is awesome anything. And then you'd have the problem of pendulum swings within religions, where Neltouda's followers have a huge advantage and that Baerinika's are always fightong an uphill battle.

Finally, how is this really different from the characters earning those imm-points, except that the imm is handing them out? I mean, as a follower I'm going to do certain things, and I can either be rewarded less, more or exactly equal to the number of points I generate for my god. And if it's isn't exactly equal, that's kind of unfair to someone. So why not just give the points directly to the character? And then it's not that different from imm exp for edges, except that it's automated (and thus farmable,,aka boring).

On people focusing on 'easier' religions, I think that wouldn't be a problem. In theory, a single powerful Scarab could bring more power to a religion than a 5 little bandwagon hoppers. Since what is bestowed upon followers would be proportional to the count and activity, each follower could receive the same amount of love. You get a smaller slice of a bigger pie, or a bigger slice of a smaller pie, but you'd be getting the same amount of pie. Also consider that too many followers of one religion should mean a large number of people fighting over a finite number of rewardable objectives. It's like what happens when too many people are in one cabal, boredom autocorrects.

As far as preference to some chars, there seems to be some kind of assumption that imms are fair. Do you think they are referees? They can be benevolent, but I expect them to be petty, cruel and treat mortals as playthings or children. But, let's just say they want to be fair. If followers brought influence in some way that was calculated the imms could then see what the character has done for him. I don't think any imm is going to give the cold shoulder to any player who is giving the imm lots of love(power to the religion) already.

Finally, in the way this is different. It changes immteraction from a one way street to something where the mortals return some benefit to their god. Right now imms interact with players and give rewards and it very nice and altruistic. Even the most evil god is really just being nice when he rewards his follower. But what does he get out of it? Now there is some motivation and reward to having followers. Instead of, 'Ugh. Here's JimBob storm giant, who pestering me with prays. I guess I have to do some chores...' The process becomes more positive because JimBob has something the imm should want. 'Here's JimBob, he may not fully understand my religion, but with a little work he can bring me some power.' The effort the imm puts in will bear some fruit. Giving the imms goals/metrics and ways to accomplish things will make their game better and perhaps keep them playing.

This system would not be too unlike the edge system and yes it would have some imm ruling over it. That is the point. Make your god happy, bring him power, and he will do what it takes to retain you. A god who treats his followers poorly would be shooting himself in the foot.

Because of the edge system I'm wondering if a lot of the framework already exists in the code of the mud to make this easier to do then something entirely from scratch.

Your idea actually sounds kinda cool, but it would screw over people that choose a sphere for RP reason's that have no active IMM, or someone that chooses a sphere but does not necessarily follow/pray/preach that Imm. Should those people never get rewarded? They can become leaders in a Cabal but no more? Do their Cabal Imm have to give them rewards out of their "pool" even though they are not a follower? How about someone not in a Cabal?

I agree the above type of player are less likely to get rewards anyway, but your system would make it near impossible. No Imm is going to want to waste their pool of points on someone that is not a follower when they already have 10 followers to spread their love around with.

I just think it would be too difficult to manage a system like that.

Do you need edges to be successful? One edge won't do too much, but over a char's lifetime they add up. Not having these rewards won't cripple your char. A third legacy, a paladin virtue, a spell/skill, these things would be expensive to the God.

You're absolutely right that worshiping a dead god or a godless sphere will not help you. That's just the way the mythical world of CF works. I generally avoid religions but this idea might help with the vagueness of most, which is one thing that keeps me away. Goals are good.

I did say that a god can do anything with the power they've accumulated. The god can be brought power by anyone. They don't need to be under their sphere. A smart god would see the godless player and find a way to draw power from them. In turn the player would probably be rewarded.

I don't think it would be a good idea to control how a cabal god's power was used with regards to non-cabal members. That that could be a problem is a good point. My answer is there is some economics to the distribution of the points. Pouring a god's points on non-followers would be bad behavior for a god and would ultimately weaken himself and cause followers to lose faith and abandon the religion. Theoretically, a mortal could move to another religion.