Granted I only gave it 16 hours over 6 days but I still felt it would never really work out. I only play one char at a time, at euro times, and with partial empowerments and virtues I think I would just get annoyed.

1. Cookie cutter role. I did the mistake of trying something different that I don't think was received well (probably rightly so). So I never really knew if I was ignored because my char did not fit or if I just failed to catch my imm.

I've been empowered 8-10 times perhaps through out the years and if you are not incredibly stupid or a bitch it is usually not hard, I've only failed once before and that was an imm that i realized had left the staff. So if you go cookie cutter you will probably not fail, because the imms are mostly good people. They don't want to be bitches towards players.

2. Email and wait for response before rolling. I sent an email after my first few prays around level 10 but got no response. One wants to be sure that the imm can be around and interact when you can play.

3. Play more than one char. There is a big possibility of being forced to sit at a level for some time. So just play another char also and send an email/note.

4. Stalk imms, see when they interact with people and write immortal comments on pbf. That should be a good basis for choosing your imm as other things are a gamble (unless they respond on mail)

Then have fun I guess?

Sometimes, when you don't get empowered, it's not because your immortal is busy or keeps missing you, but because your roleplay isn't good enough to be empowered more.

In this case (as in your case), not getting empowered more is the system working.

You weren't stand-out enough.

Don't expect empowerment.

It's kind of even more, stood out some but not in the good way.

Honestly, I think there's been plenty of people who may or may not have ever gotten the religion they followed, but plugged away at it, and at least TRIED to follow that religion in SOME manner. Sometimes, a person's view of a religion can be just plain wrong, but it feels like there's a lot of times that an Immortal has made a comment that either; the person had a take on the Immortal's religion that they'd never thought of, but worked and the Immortal let them roll with it, or they never quite GOT it, but never really did BAD, and people've been pity-empowered.

I honestly believe my last paladin had gotten a certain amount of pity-empowered. I finally think I *UNDERSTOOD* the religion, but never really managed to really live it w/ the character.

If not, there's no telling if you're having a hard time finding your Imm, just because you are, or because you're not rping well enough.

When the case is like this situation, there are help files. Help Pray and Help Pray Extra are really good ones to go by.

If your pray is for rp purposes, do not go ooc.

FWIW, when someone's RP is too poor to get empowered, ignoring them for hours while they pray in your shrine is a super inconsiderate way to handle it.

nt

Going just from our absolutely charming in game interactions.

I would have to guess, that was probably quite intentional.

Being ignored that is.

First off, who are you, and why would Enlilth have it out for you from past characters? The very fact that Aether is allowed to play should be somewhat indicative that the imms give out second and third chances.

Get rid of traditional empowerment.

Make priest classes' ability to commune higher level supplications based on their Immortal XP.

I've never had a character who didn't get XP for their initial role, subsequent role entries, and various Immortal-interaction unless I was making a conscious lack of effort.

Without the direct "I'm looking for YOU" aspect of empowerment, it's certainly possible more characters might fall through the cracks when the staff is spread thin, but probably no more than it hurts traditional empowerment. And like I said, I've simply never been in a situation where I thought to myself, "Gee, I added this BAMF role a long time ago, why won't anyone recognize me?!" Perhaps other players have had a different experience.

This would result in people being able to play empowerment characters without having to rely on a single person and expand the dogmas and role choices for priest classes, while still allowing the staff to ensure there aren't a bunch of throwaway, no-RP healers running around in explorer-permas (or rot-spamming shamans, etc.).

Personally, I prefer traditional empowerment, but given the state of the game, I think my solution is the better of two less-than-perfect options.

I routinely play characters that get little or no exp for their role entries. I also never think I updated a BAMF role. Creative writing is not a part of my skill set. It isn't so much that I can't do it as that the level of time and energy required on my part just isn't worth it.

I have tried empowerment, and even successfully been empowered before, but it has rarely, if ever, been worth the time investment for me. I want to play a druid, but my idea of what a druid follower of immortal X is and what their idea of a druid follower is just never seems to match up.

Almost every immteraction I've had (with the notable exception of Enlith and Kehade) I end up feeling like we aren't just not on the same page, but aren't even reading the same book. I recently tried an empowerment character, and while I got some good immteraction that was fun, it seemed like the overall message of it was that my character wasn't going to work.

I also hate the sphere system with a burning passion. Sometimes I can find a "driving force" among the sphere list for my characters, but more times I can't. Even when I can find something, it tends to be a force in my characters life, but not the seed of truth that my character is built around. So while Rage might be my sphere, it isn't what the character is truly about. Even worse is when the immortal covering the sphere is someone that will never empower the race/class/cabal combination I want to play, or the religion is incompatible with my take on the sphere/character.

I would like to play empowerment classes. I have character ideas that only work as a paladin, or a druid, or a shaman or whatever. I'll never get to play those as long as the empowerment system stays the way it is. I'm not going to invest 20 hours of my time to find out that my views and an immortal's character's views on the character I want to play are incompatible.

It isn't so much that I want empowerment to be easier, as I don't want to see throwaway empowerment characters any more than the staff does, but that I want the sphere/religion system to be a lot more flexible than it currently is.

Try making up your own religion.

...then again, that will probably cost you more time than even the usual empowerment.

Lessens my over all role play experience.

The spheres are already a bizzar thing to me let alone ther religeons, now their can be Player made ones too? Nuh uh! No way!

This isn't anything new. Even when there were more religions and more active Immortals, there were still the handful of folks who fell through the cracks. It's the inherent flaw in the empowerment system. Unfortunately, the additional of posted playing times and active / inactive status tends to lead to this expectation that empowerment should not or will not be much of a hassle because hey, the person picked an Immortal that says they'll be there.

I avoid empowerment classes like the plague now. The relatively small number of truly active religions just doesn't work out well for me, especially once you filter out all the incompatible stuff for a given build. I'd like to play them, but I don't because I know the design of empowerment will be too much of a nuisance.

I really wouldn't mind seeing more druids, shamans, and paladins walking around because empowerment isn't required. I do like the fact that healers require empowerment, however, since they can sway cabal dynamics and PK so drastically. The fact that they require empowerment simply keeps the numbers down and all but eliminates "throwaway" healers.

>I really wouldn't mind seeing more druids, shamans, and
>paladins walking around because empowerment isn't required. I
>do like the fact that healers require empowerment, however,
>since they can sway cabal dynamics and PK so drastically. The
>fact that they require empowerment simply keeps the numbers
>down and all but eliminates "throwaway" healers.

And yet I'd argue you'd see many more "throwaway" of all of them just like you see in every other class that exists today.

If empowerment were removed from these classes, they would be toned down in power across the board.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

I agree you'd see more throwaways. I just meant I'd much rather have to deal with throwaway druids/shamans/paladins than with healers.

Most throwaway shamans are just gonna spam rot, which is weak, but easily countered.

Paladins really aren't anything special without virtues, which are Immortal given, meaning throwaways won't have them.

Throwaway, no-RP PK druids do kind of scare me. More than any other of the empowerment classes, but I don't think it would be so bad.

Healers are the only class I really, really wouldn't want people power-ranking to 51 in a couple dozen hours and going nuts with zero oversight whatsoever.

**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.

This sounds alright, as long as earning the right to keep my empowerment basically means not breaking role, going OOC, etc.

There are so few Immortals, active or otherwise, that having to pick one AND go out of my way to be a "follower" just to keep empowerment would be too restrictive.

The vagueness and open-endedness of spheres in regards to religion is what makes the system we have now bearable in terms of variety.

>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?)

I disagree with this. Anytime I played an empowered character, I spent a great deal of my time if not speaking about my sphere, than making sure everyone who knows the character knew damn well what sphere I was by how I acted. I think sphere plays a vital part of a well roleplayed characters life.

>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 think this is putting the cart before the horse. Playing an empowered character is sort of like being in the advanced class. You have to prove yourself BEFORE you get the special hall pass that lets you go unescorted into the computer lab when you're finished with your work in another class. Otherwise you wind up with too many retards where they clearly don't belong. This would appear to have been the case (and the consensus as well) here.

>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.

Three points here. Priests already have a far easier time getting tatted, because their gods are constantly checking up on them. They ALREADY got the nod of approval from their god, so they have a much easier time being noticed when they shine.

Two, coding a whole new set of skills/supps for a bunch of classes that really A. Aren't broken (with the possible exception of shamans who are, at least the last time I played, deeply in need of some love.) and B sounds really boring for the coders.

Three, the douchebag factor. Just as one person gets upset about waiting a long time for empowerment (I waited I don't even remember how long for Kasty, but when I got it it was VERY worth the wait), a whole range of people will be annoyed by the fully empowered throw away character that takes days or weeks to get noticed/litchslapped into nothing but a gecho and a bad memory. I would personally rather have one dude be annoyed with a bit of a wait, than have 10 or even 5 people turned off of the game because of some ####bag who was running around with a powerful skillset and zero accountability (until after they get caught, and by then we are looking at possibly some people never returning because of a bad time).

>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.

This would be a great idea, if the player base were made up of calm, mature, thoughtful people. In a world where...You know what? #### it. That world just doesn't exist, and too many people in the playerbase would just run roughshod over too many people and the mud would die within a year. I'm sorry but it is what it is.
>
>
>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.

I disagree with the throwaway priest syndrome. People are a lot less likely to go screwing up a character they put 50 hours or so of work into, just to do something stupid to piss it all away. Most people anyway.

The help file for spheres is very specific in that it says characters are unaware of spheres.

**EDIT** (It seems to me the helpfile has been changed. Wierd.)

If you were preaching to me about spheres, I would assume you were being OOC/a newbie/or playing a lunatic. The first and last would make me walk away, the second would get you an IC reference to "Help Sphere".

I remember seeing descriptions that had things like...

Here is a very ANGRY dwarf. ANGER comes from his beard. You sense ANGER in his steely ANGRY eyes.

Sayto angry dwarf hello

Angry the dwarf says with an ANGRY voice, I feel ANGER because you are an elf.

Spheres are just bleh. Hate them even though I can deal with them. They are just bleh, oh, I already said that.

Pretty sure Vlad didn't let people know what his sphere was through horribly written descriptions or directly telling people about the sphere. I am sure he did it by RPing in a manner that his sphere choice was made clear to those around him. This is how this should be conveyed in the game.

As for sphere's while they aren't the only way to do it, they aren't a bad way to help build into the game some guides for RP. Personaly the only time I run into any trouble with them is if I don't put anything thought into a character before I create it and I don't think the game should be redesigned to fix my lack of forethought.

Could being unempowered mean that you have access to all of your supplications and skills, but use them at some reduced rate. Like you said, if there was no empowerment priest classes would get universally toned down. Well, what if they start toned down and when they are empowered they get toned up. Maybe there could be just a handful of supps you don't get, or maybe they could all cost more mana until your empowered, maybe enemies could save easier against them until your empowered, maybe mend wounds heals less... whatever.

What do you think?


P.S I personally have no issues with the current empowerment system, but lots of other people seem to.

>What do you think?

I think people would complain about not getting full empowerment, just like they are now.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

For what it's worth, I recently tried an empowerment class and I definitely did "fall through the cracks". In the staff's defense, though, I chose a sphere belonging to an active imm (Neltouda) then tried to get "custom empowered" by a "generic force" other than Neltouda herself.

Nobody else wanted to pick me up because they viewed me as being Neltouda's responsibility by virtue of my sphere choice. Neltouda probably didn't want to pick me up because I wasn't praying to her directly. Eventually she got with me and said, "Hey, it's me or nothing," at which point I deleted. Not because I don't like Neltouda (I do), but because her religion very much conflicted with my role.

In the past, though, I've had mostly good experiences w/ empowerment.