Which... is what I did, right?

EDIT: As in, what still needs to be cut?

Fairly sure it's ranked off what you have in ORDER PRIVS.

If you want the honest truth, I didn't read half of your post. I like your idea in theory. I just don't think they're gonna go with it.

Yeah, I logged in and read about this and was wondering why this was needed.

My sentiments exactly; there just doesn't seem to be a reason for this, nor does there seem to be a reason to penalize over this however meager the penalty is. I think there should be a few more buffs to this rather than a monthly drain, improved essence drain on death and lack of using karma to gain powers. Maybe you can cut the cost of karma needed for the power(s), extend the length that the powers are active or things that are similar to that.

Well obviously the idea behind this system is to more strongly tie the orders to their appropriate cities/communes. Just asking that people receive benefits for being positive-affinity but that there be no penalties for negative-affinity totally defeats the point; that's just "yay let's hand out random buffs to order members". It wouldn't discourage mixing of cities in orders which is clearly what the system is intended to do.

While I can sympathize with the ill effects of this and the problems it will create with roleplay, do we really need this to allow for more buffs without any sort of double edge to it? The game is already thick with buffs of all sorts, particularly with Shrine powers as is. I think if you're going to take away the negatives, there should be no truly major benefits to reap.

Just a thought - you might adjust this by considering order enmities and... friendships? Or whatever is positive. If you belong to an organization that has a pantheon member with a declared enmity against whoever you are in the order of, this will kick in negative affinity effects. So for example, Poor Xenthos, the Glomdoring Mayflower, would incur negative effects for Maylea as a result of her enmity with Nocht. If there is no declared enmities, then there is no affinity effect, and if there is a "friendship" or bond or whatever, then positive affinity still kicks in (though that'd probably be redundant since this is unlikely to occur outside of an org's given Pantheon anyways).

The only real problem I see with this is players trying to dictate to gods who they can and can't have enmities with.

The only problem I have with this system is the lack of variety in available Divines per pantheon. This is especially true for the new cities, but still relevant to the older orgs. Celest for example has a Divine Pantheon of four. Two are active, and one of those only recently returned to activity.

I think we need more Gods, and more of them being active.

You aren't punished for not being in an order...

I disagree. Just the Gods that we have need to be active.

I'm still rather confused as to exactly what problem this thing is supposed to correct. Does Gaudi have too many Fainites there? Is one of the Elders critically short on followers? Not really involved with orders, so I can't say for sure, but this kinda looks like a rather drastic solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

And does this mean rogues count against affinity wherever they go, then?

Actually, I think there are/were only 2 Fainites in Gaudiguch. There was 3 or 4 maybe, before this but they quit a month ago or more.

The admins were uncomfortable having an area of the game which didn't screw over every rogue who wanted to participate in it.

In the beginning, I would have agreed. At this point, that's equivalent to saying you aren't punished for not learning Dramatics. There's various losses involved in not being in an Order.

But that wasn't what I was getting at. When you as a player desire to add Order RP to your character, or Order powers, or Order-based social influence, or whatever it is you're after, coded mechanical coercion towards org-specific divines has a tendency to restrict choices even beyond RP restrictions. Add a greater variety of Gods, and that's alleviated.

I fully understand the desire to keep orgs focused on and reinforce their own values. This is much the same as actively discouraging rogues in the game.

I see it as a problem if within an org a player has only one or two options of Divine to be involved with.

Just as well, if you had 4 non-Gloms, I would expect results!

On the bright side, I feel like this could help me with the choice to stay Orderless.

I don't see this as needed. The possible exception is one order where the population is spread between two organizations and that may cause friction within the order. However I'm basing that on hearsay, not my direct knowledge.

I think Elostian made a good compromise with how he addressed new members for the past couple months.

At the minimum the following should be removed.

Monthly Review
--------------
o Members with an affinity to their order generate essence monthly.
o Members not in affinity with their order cost essence monthly.

It should be the decision of a god alone whether they want a player in their order or not. Isn't this a traditionally expected benefit of bothering to put the time and effort into Lusternia?

More importantly a 'tax' on non citizen order members is sort of a weak decision. I'd suggest either totally allow members from other organizations or don't.

In addition you are allowing players to put pressure on a Divine. If players kick someone out of a city and they worship the patron divine, the divine cannot do anything to override the player decision, and the luckless individual now costs them essence.

I think essence should be primarily based off of player offerings. It provides a very simple method to determine if the admin is popular or not, approved of by whom, and when. A bad admin will do the same thing some families do, ie recruit and promote like crazy for essence alone. Some admins will exploit the system.

I can think of about ten different scenarios to abuse those two rules and cause more drama rather than have them fix whatever you are trying to fix.

Can anyone actually give us some numbers on what all the affinity stuff means?

I'm for more diversity and don't like these changes. If an Order is just going to be an extension of your org (or worse, a clique) then why bother? I'm Orderless but if I had to choose a Divine to follow I would more concerned with Their teachings than the org they are affiliated with, which IMO is the way it should be.

Also if the bonus is significant players might be encouraged to join Orders just to passively generate essence like totems do for power.

Trust me, Orders (like EVERYTHING ELSE in this game) are just cliques. Unless you know the right people, enjoy being order rank 1.