The fact that titles are mechanically an OOC thing and their frequency is low. That means if you get a negative one, you are being singled out from the rest of the playerbase in a negative way. The fact this often occurs while the player is already in a negative state of emotion tends to just make the matters worse (and the imms are likely in a negative emotional state to give it as well).

What you have is a recipe that is so obviously headed for disaster I have no idea why a rational individual would be surprised that this is how it turns out.

If 50% of chars had titles it would be less of a big deal because it would be less of a rare occurence (this would of course also make getting a positive title less of a reward as well).

To take your bully example if you treated people in a bad way and they in turn resorted to psycological retaliation in the form of name calling in real life do you think the bully would take it in a level headed way or do you think it would rile them up more?



The solution, if the character is really being a super dousch then give them the title. if they start spam praying about it create a pray ignore feature. Creating a formal dispute process could help you so that players don't get the sense there is no way to dispute it (like the current way, and people want answers in a timely manner not the vague rp for a few weeks response). If the player thinks the decision is final and they have nothing to lose by having a melt down then they are not going to think twice about having a melt down. I don't neccesarily think ROTD talking to immortals is the best route for it either, consider something out of game handled through email or chat or something where the identity of the administrator in question is not hidden.