What's usually looked for before interaction with a PC attempting this and is this IMM and avatar driven or only IMM can spearhead this?

If/when the immortal who originally championed the idea returns, it may come back to life. Until that time, the greenways/pagan thing has gone the way of the dodo.

Custom empowerment is still a thing, and like all empowerment it requires an IMM to do it. Going the route of a custom is a pretty sizable gamble however. It requires a fairly well thought out religion that you have created, and then it also requires an IMM to have interest enough in the religion you created to want to interact with you as said imaginary deity. The problem with most (not all but most) player created religions for custom empowerment is that they have no potential pitfalls or ways for the player to "screw up", or they are designed in an attempt to rationalize something that is generally considered bad RP (like being a murder druid as a random example).

My advice to anyone going forward who wants to try a custom empowerment route would be to either email the staff or note to immortal in game asking if someone would be willing to champion their custom. Otherwise there is a pretty good chance it won't get you anywhere.

It was created to give an option as sometimes specific religions can be too narrow in doctrine. The greenways gave a general parameter you could follow with a role. That structure would enable you to not have to make up a full religion someone would have to jump into agreement with.

Why would it got he way of the dodo? It seems like a boon option. It's very little investment on your part. You are not tattooing anyone. You are not being their immortal. You are making sure a priest is simply following the concept of the greenways/pagan belief. Being natural without restricting everyone to the specific dogma of the current immortals(which can be limited).

I guess in short..after that random text... it seems like this is little investment for the staff to see if some guy is roleplaying... has a foundation that fits within the element of the greenway and empower them.

You are quick to pull the trigger on some guy killing the wood-elf as a goodie for wanting a potion/kill midnight... or ROTD/severally handicap a chieftan for killing tremblefist for a false/unplausible mechanics abuse.. I think you'd notice some greenway dude going deviant.

>You are quick to pull the trigger on some guy killing the
>wood-elf as a goodie for wanting a potion/kill midnight... or
>ROTD/severally handicap a chieftan for killing tremblefist for
>a false/unplausible mechanics abuse.. I think you'd notice
>some greenway dude going deviant.
>

I don't quite get what the RP failings of your own characters have to do with Greenways/Creeds or their going away.

This catches me by surprise a bit. I was under impression that this was a non-Amaranthe specific option (which was introduced by her).

I would consider disabling the helpfiles on this subject if this is no longer an option or maybe putting a note in wizlist. (Just a suggestion.)

The helpfiles are gone.

Edit: at least in game. They shouldnt be available on the forum but still are currently.

With Zylfaer I was going for greenways, I wasn't sure if I got tagged as custom because of a mistake on my part, or what was going on - or why it was so very hard to get an answer from my pagan deity.

It turned out to be really awesome of Drehir to pick me up as a follower, and I really really liked playing under him. I still kick myself for auto-ing.

But I'm optimistic that the custom route is still viable!!!

>But I'm optimistic that the custom route is still viable!!!


One of the core distinctions between Greenways/Creeds and "custom empowerment" was that we wanted to try and offer a higher level of commitment from the staff to the former. In practice that didn't really materialize.

As always, we discourage people from going the custom route because there is zero room for expectation when it comes to interaction and empowerment. It's an "at your own risk" endeavor for those who are willing to gamble their time and effort against the possibility of something special.

Do NOT make a religion and start praying just because you're bored and/or don't like the wizlist UNLESS you acknowledge that the character may not work out as a result.

The number of active imms is at an all time low. Some of the ones that are active have little to no interest in running religions, yourself included. :P



Just saying..

Exactly and we try to work around this and still met by another wall

For sake of argument, my two biggest concerns with "doing away with empowerment" are:

1) The playerbase would scream and kick and whine if we ever tried to reverse the decision, regardless of how many active immortals/religions we had.

2) I'm asserting that certain empowerment classes are not balanced if they aren't throttled by empowerment and/or constrained by a religion and the supervision of an immortal. (Aside, I'm not really interested in debating this point at this time. Or to be more blunt, I don't care if serial druid players think that druids without empowerment are okay.)

The second point could in theory be addressed by a non-trivial amount of code refactoring, but then what couldn't.

I don't think empowerment being stripped away would solve anything. For some of us the implementation of empowerment is a great boon for those like myself who are more RP driven. I do think that with the lower choices or IMM's for religion pagan/greenway is a good means of implementation because for the player take shaman for instance you can only get one path and in return you get a faster case of empowerment by not having only one IMM follow your character. It would also be cool if avatars had the ability to review the characters or interact with those whose pagan/greenway needed some fixing up or interaction.

I'm sure this request will be dismissed but I thought it was good to state something on its behalf.

For players who enjoy RP, please keep in mind that empowerment and religion aren't the same thing. Being a follower of a god, getting "immteraction", and pursuing things like a tattoo are something that priest and non-priest classes can do alike as well as something a priest class could do even if they weren't required to be empowered.

In theory the empowerment system also encourages RP between players, but more and more I find that isn't really the case. People either RP because they want to and enjoy it or they don't. Plenty of people play priests with #### RP because they want to play a priest class and are okay being a D+ character as long as it means they get to be a paladin or whatever. So if we did not require empowerment, I'm not entirely convinced it would have some big negative impact on the overall quality of RP on the MUD (though it might), especially since we'd still slap ####ty druids for being ####ty druids and crappy paladins for being crappy paladins.

I'm one of those players. Who place RP above all else I've spent countless hours sitting in shrines (rayihn) in particular just because what has cemented me to the game is interaction between players and interaction between IMM's. So rather then continue to nuke things because IMM's don't find it needed it necessary look at the overall fact that our PB and IMM's are at an all time low. Continuing to cut things away serves no purpose. I love that you of all people UMIRON have allowed players to have a voice or at least know the thoughts from behind the curtains with what is being planned and I truly respect that which is why I never leave post on here. I feel like players come at you all to much.

But on the flip side I honestly can't see he bad implementation that pagan religion brought. Simply to the fact that with the shrinking IMM list it gave us the ability to still hold some grip on the path and stories of our characters and be helpful to you all by having chars still get empowerment but not require you to follow this one character all through their life. It also took some of the time sink out of a steadily declining CF that isn't becoming worth the time sink anymore.

Is that players believed it was a viable option but the reality was that it was not. People would attempt it and be ignored because no one wanted to deal with it. Removing it takes away the false hope that people are going to get empowered through an avenue that no one wanted to touch with a ten foot pole.

So what then happens to normal empowerment where it's already like pulling teeth, and the PB/IMMS that are dwindling? I mean more specifically paths, which is why I went greenway due to the lack of available paths being covered under the CURRENT not recently dormant IMM's. There was a common overlap of paths like vengeance and pain and others where left to IMM's for that are either no longer around or you for sure wouldn't catch.

You are at the exact same spot that you were before greenways was removed. You still have a character who has a religion designed and an imaginary deity that you have been praying to. There has been exactly nothing changed for you between today and yesterday.

I cannot stress enough: the removal of the greenways framework does not mean custom empowerment has gone away. Custom empowerment is still an option like it always has been. You are more than welcome to try your luck with custom empowerment if you want a specific path on an align/ethos combo that doesn't cover it in the perfect pantheon. You however run a huge risk, as Umiron said, that your time will be wasted if no one from the staff opts to try and run with your idea.

>You are at the exact same spot that you were before greenways
>was removed. You still have a character who has a religion
>designed and an imaginary deity that you have been praying to.
> There has been exactly nothing changed for you between today
>and yesterday.
>
>I cannot stress enough: the removal of the greenways framework
>does not mean custom empowerment has gone away. Custom
>empowerment is still an option like it always has been. You
>are more than welcome to try your luck with custom empowerment
>if you want a specific path on an align/ethos combo that
>doesn't cover it in the perfect pantheon. You however run a
>huge risk, as Umiron said, that your time will be wasted if no
>one from the staff opts to try and run with your idea.


So dealing with the repeated paths and paths forgotten because IMMS are not gone, why not pick up more paths as IMM's? So that we have more variety to our choices of even slimmer deities.

>So dealing with the repeated paths and paths forgotten because
>IMMS are not gone, why not pick up more paths as IMM's? So
>that we have more variety to our choices of even slimmer
>deities.

That's based on the theme of individual paths and religions, not a desire to make sure that at any given time X path is available to Y character(s).

Certain paths are never offered by gods/religions that lean to or away from a certain align or ethos, for example.

We have no intention of changing that, I'm afraid. RP will remain a factor.

So why don't you...


Cap druid empowerment to 40 and require they link to a religion/active god/custom religion/cabal immortal/leadership to get 40+ skills/supps.

For paladins and shamans let the virtue/shaman path come from active religion/immortals/cabal immortal/leadership.

This way you incentivize good role play and sportsmanship and remove some of the grind. You give the people playing more than one path to achieve a goal.. so if one path is no longer an option the character doesnt get nuked.

As for #1

1) The playerbase would scream and kick and whine if we ever tried to reverse the decision, regardless of how many active immortals/religions we had.

Lets be for real.. If the playerbase screaming and kicking was a part of your decision making matrix. You wouldn't have nerfed edge points. :P

>So why don't you...
>
>
>Cap druid empowerment to 40 and require they link to a
>religion/active god/custom religion/cabal immortal/leadership
>to get 40+ skills/supps.
>
>For paladins and shamans let the virtue/shaman path come from
>active religion/immortals/cabal immortal/leadership.
>
>This way you incentivize good role play and sportsmanship and
>remove some of the grind. You give the people playing more
>than one path to achieve a goal.. so if one path is no longer
>an option the character doesnt get nuked.

Like I said, I'm not really interested in having this conversation right now. To elaborate, I don't want to have it largely because I'd likely forget everything I take away from it long before I (or anyone else) actually started working on such a project. But for what it's worth, I don't like your idea(s), partly because I would specifically want a solution that doesn't work differently for each priest class.

>As for #1
>
>1) The playerbase would scream and kick and whine if we ever
>tried to reverse the decision, regardless of how many active
>immortals/religions we had.
>
>Lets be for real.. If the playerbase screaming and kicking was
>a part of your decision making matrix. You wouldn't have
>nerfed edge points. :P

Like that thread where players overwhelmingly supported removing EPs for PK. (I left out the question mark because that as rhetorical.)

The help files were up yesterday and available all yesterday. I also sent prayers and newbie chats in reference to greenway pagan chars that were answered and even confirmed that it was doable. It's kinda sad that a simple means of RP thay limits you to one path which was fine is being stripped when it requires minimal effort on the imm's part and easier for the character to get the ball rolling with the significantly shorter list of Imm's and players.

But understood the easier shot empowerment characters has is now up in flames.

Player perception: I am doing a greenways empowerment so I will outline a set of religious beliefs and a deity I can pray to.

Reality: you just made a custom empowerment attempt with the creation of said deity that you pray to.

There are currently two characters I can think of that could fall under the umbrella of an attempt at greenways. Both of said characters were not working within the confines of greenways but were instead doing custom religion empowerment based on the details presented in their roles and their prayers.

For those players exactly nothing has changed.

Then perhaps the the greenways helpfile should've been more specific in that sense because talking about tribal pantheons still fits under the scope of someone writing up and listing a series of roles on a custom IMM. I've done the custom IMM process before and loved it. The very general helpfile made it seem like this was a structured and faster way of the custom process. It's not me coming at anything the imm's do I usually stay away from the boards. Just found it weird that if I had not said anything here I would've continued to pray for the greenway pagan b/c help files were active until...now? Imm's on the newbie chat where under the impression that it was a thing therefore leading us to believe the same. For something that offered a much quicker route to empowerment in a time where the PB IS super low and RP is kind of falling throw the cracks.

In theory, it was a quicker route to empowerment. In reality no one was doing anything to empower these people so they were just being ignored.

Okay I get what you're saying, it was implemented but successfully utilized? Thanks for the clarifications.

.