**My point in this whole issue is based on the argument that if imms are not denying empowerment in most empowerment interactions then the value added of making those interactions a pre-requisite to maintain role play quality is minimal. In fact I would argue that the joy a few players recieve from the process does not surpass the number of players who avoid playing the classes because they just don't want to deal with it. I haven't personally played an empowerment class for over 5 years just because I don't want to get stuck in limbo and I am not alone. We want to know before making a ten to fifty hour investment in something if it will pay off.


There seems to be a couple of issues at the heart of empowerment debate.

The player Side

-Waiting for access to your skill set

The immortal side

-Creating a role play atmosphere around religions
-Preventing throwaway priests

I think the best way to address the problem is

1.) remove spheres and have people commit to an immortal instead. the whole sphere thing just doesn't exist in game (in terms of people talking about their spheres in a role playing manner or mobs talking about their spheres, almost everything is immortal religion centric with just loose ties to certain spheres I mean seriously what is the logical link between the lord of magic and honesty?)

2.) Everyone is automatically empowered to level 51. priests are forced to pick an imm at level 10 like they now need to pick spheres but other chars can wait till later in life (or never) to commit to a specific imm.

instead of earning empowerment now players just have to not lose it. because players have pledged to specific imms you know who your followers are and you can go and remove their empowerment if they are not being good priests.

I would also make it substantially easier for priests to get tattoos then non priests and also create a pool of new suplications and skills for each priest class. Just like paladins earn virtues the incentive for continued patronage would be expanding powers.

For instance a druid might get a skill to detect the kinds of herbs most likely to be harvested in an area. A healer might get cure immolation. A shaman might get cause influenze. the basic idea is to reward good priests by giving them more abilities on top of the norm as opposed to leaving them with less abilities.



I think that there is already plenty of throw away quality priests even with the current system and while moving auto-empower to 20 has been huge it doesn't solve the problem that your average cf mortal and cf immortal is playing less time which means that the chances of the two parties being able to engage in empowerment become more difficult. I am fully in favor of building mechanics into the game that reduce the need for interaction between imms and players for what most people consider should be theirs anyway.