Oh, I understand now. When the admins make the game worse, it's to help us grow as people.

I assume it's funny if you get all the way through it. But I couldn't get past the "jokes" at the beginning.

Offerings by people who are not members of said order were not affected. So if Jimmy John of Lisaera's order wants to offer to Fain, the effects will not be diminished, regardless of Jimmy John's city/commune. If Jimmy John is a Magnagoran Lisae, his offerings are only diminished for Lisaera.

So an ur'guard in Fain's order could offer to Eventru for full essence, but a rogue in Eventru's order would have his offers penalized.

It's not getting any easier to wrap my head around this.

That's slightly better, but the various forms of "Why do this in the first place?" questions are probably still there.

I'm going to having agree with the general consensus. The Affinity thing seems rather silly to have. Not just because one it makes you feel a bit guilty that you're waste essence of your divine but two that some of the gods aren't really.....a one city/commune god. Yes, they have aligned themselves with a particular place but their RP states that they are open for everyone. It just doesn't make sense to me that you would do something like this when you have a diversity of followers. Example gods would be like Isune, Raezon, Elostian. They don't cater to one specific city, but a wide ranging group of people. Again, it seems to be a silly idea, no matter what reason it was put in for.

However, I get the feeling that the admins aren't going to be taking it out despite the voices against it. :\\

You do realize that this makes no sense in any language and or universe/subspace continuum of any dimension whatsoever?

My view on this went from "okay, this isn't needed" to "this isn't logical" and now to "remove it before we can let it fester". There are stupid additions, there's bad additions, and then there's this.

EDIT: Nevermind

I apologize, then. I thought my statement was completely comprehensible English.

Hopefully this will be of assistance to you, though I fear it may not be.

I'm not trying to argue with you all over whether it's a 'good' or 'bad' thing, nor explain its reason - that's kind of Estarra's thing. I'm just explaining the mechanics.

So chill out.

There are two reasons I can see for this change: either the new orgs have a high proportion of people joining orders outside of the Patron, or orders in general have a large number of high ranking members who aren't in the org of the God. If it is the former, Estarra might think that this is damaging Kalikai and Elostian's order, and made this change accordingly. If it is the latter, it might be an attempt to tie the RP of Divine/Org closer together. Either way, it feels like the playerbase is being forced into decisions based on min-maxing essence.

Can we get the hard numbers of the essence bonus/penalty? If it amounts to a few extra offerings a week I think it would go down much better than if you're a permanent drain on your Divine.

I don't see this as a bad thing, but I do agree with Gregori that positive reinforcement, by way of making order members in the proper city/commune gain more through their offerings than others, would've been better than punishing everyone else.

Why should the offerings of a person not in the order be worth more than someone in the order who's in the wrong city/commune? (I think that's what Daedalion was saying.)

As it is, this seems like a solution looking for a problem, especially given the way patronage apparently works.

While I "get" that the essence drop for being in the "wrong" order are probably not enough to break the bank if the order members step up their offering to offset the loss, in general this seems to be a disincentive for roleplay that includes shades of gray, or for joining the orders of gods whose beliefs aren't really city-specific.

Regarding how patronage apparently works, since every god can apparently patron only one city/commune, the new organizations are at a disadvantage in some ways unless they can convince a god to jump ship (or unless one decides to do so on his/her own, of course).

This is a horrible thing. I am in Hallifax, and am part of Viravain's order. I would all of the other gods don't interest me at all. Even as Lucidian, I wouldn't join Elostian's order.

While I'm only OR3 in Viravain's, thus probably not costing much to Her, I don't really hunt, nor do I influence much anymore since I hit level 80. I get how this is probably made to make members be more 'active' or even quit the order if they are not in the affinity org. but really, it is going to hurt some of the orders. What about the people that don't hunt or influence (ie the writers and scholars). Should it be fair that they generate essence for just being in the right org? Maybe, but the scholars not of the said org cost essence?

In all, I'm for the bonuses, but not for the cost of being in the order but not the org and it taking away essence from the God.

I can't see this going well. What it does is tie orders more strongly to orgs, essentially killing the "My order is not the city" argument. Also, given the tendency of certain orders to exert undue influence on their home orgs, encouraging more diversity, not less, seems like the healthier option.

By the by, Viravain's order members have absolutely no issue with you staying in the Order in regards to this change. Even if you aren't offering much. Don't worry about it-- it'll be more of an issue in orders with lots of high-OR folks who go gallivanting off to other places.

(Not to say you can't still discuss it! Just... you don't need to worry about it a lot in regards to yourself, we're all good.)

Considering how closely tied Viravain is to Glomdoring, I can't fathom why a non-Glom would ever be in her order. She is all about Crow/Wyrd/Glory be to Glomdoring/Spiderspiderspider. Unless there's been a big overhaul since I was one of Her main order people (though that didn't last long at all, ha).

There are a whole 3 people (for precisely that reason you mention), one of which is inactive and may not remain in it. The two remaining ones have a historical tie to the Order before leaving Glom, and still have strong ties to Glom, etc.

Glom's orders tend to not do much with outsiders, so this doesn't affect us as much really.

I had a paladin alt almost make it into Shikari's order, but then I abandoned him... I've never been able to play a warrior for more than a week or two.

I left Glomdoring for Hallifax for racial reasons more so. (and semi-OOCly, I don't like the way the leadership of the BT is going, with we seemly to be having a new GA every RL month or so.) . I didn't leave Her order for various reasons of I still agree with most of her teachings.

As to Xenthos, Yes right now I'm not much of a deal to Her. but as I slowly am able to kill stronger things faster, I would offer more. and slowly I am getting back into influencing things again.