Gentlemen and Gentleladies,

Perhaps some of you may be a mite bit distressed with the state of affairs regarding the essence drain of members in an Order who are not a citizen of the organization the Divine sponsors. Please. Have a seat, and a sip of Earl Gray.

Let us have a constructive enlightened discussion about your views as to the merits and flaws of said system and novel methods to mitigate the duress it is causing our fellow forum colleagues.

Ladies or gentlemen who succumb to hysterics at the very contemplation of change, please use the fainting couch on the side.

To prevent there from being an issue with joining an Order and having citizen status change while said new Order member is dormant, thus causing present Order members trouble if the Divine is absent, I would like to see the essence cost be based on time present in realms. We already have a rough mechanism to gauge this with vote weight. How difficult would it be to change the function of essence loss to be dependent on Order rank as well as some multiple of vote weight?

Keep it civil

Bully!

The theory behind order affinity is sound, but the mechanics are a bit lacking. If they brought up the amount the divine gained from aligned members to almost match the negative drain from others, it might be better. Fain gains 1k a day by Thoros being in his order, but lost how much from Vathael being in Gaudiguch?

In short: Raise the bonuses, especially if you can work something out based on that person's activity. Lower the negatives, just enough to make it sting but be workable.

Yeah, it's a little silly that Lendren as an OH only brings in 1000 a weave, yet if he were to leave, would cost 300 times that a weave. Even if you only bring in, say, 1/2 or even 1/4 what you would be taking if you were gone, it would go a long way to turning the public support for Affinity.

The biggest problem with Order Affinity is the offering malus, though. If a fully imbued needle is worth half, and compound on top of that the passive loss, and it gets downright discouraging. Besides, I don't get the RP Sense of Tom's offering of a weevil being worth twice Kinson's, if Tom is a person who raids Maylea's realm daily, and Kinson defends it. Order enemies (and non-aligned folks) shouldn't get better offering value than somebody who is in that God's Order.

So, in short,

1) Increase the passive gain and/or decrease the passive drain.
2) Cut the offering penalty. If the penalty must stay, it should be applied to non-ordermembers, not to ordermembers. (This would also encourage divine-order membership).

EDIT: something based on activity could work, but that's probably a lot harder to code...

They're obviously set on this being a way to force people to join orders aligned with their org. Lowering penalties is not going to happen. Thus, I say simply ban it entirely.

If we had more diverse gods in each org, I don't think anyone would mind this. If we had, say, a dozen gods per org, it would give some choice. As it is, if your org options aren't the best for you, you don't have an order, end of story. It's even worse when half the gods in your pantheon are inactive.

So just ban it entirely. It would cut the penalties by 100%. Instead of sucking for the order, it would suck for the all the dormant people who are sucking down our essence like sweet wine.

o.O I didn't even know that happened. That seems a bit much to have such a harsh penalty just because you're in org A and your God is aligned with org B.

I actually wouldn't mind if the drain and passive generation were both put through a Mr Coffee filter and multiplied by ten times your vote weight percent. (meaning that Joe Inactive, the Magnagoran Isunite with a vote weight of 1 would drain 10% of what he currently does, while Jill Insomniac, the Magnagoran Order Head of Nocht with a vote weight of 10 would drain the full amount she would normally, prompting a coup d'etas.)

Likewise, a person in the same org as his order could recieve, wait for it, a BONUS to their offerings based on the vote weight. This wouldn't need to be the same 10% per weight, I'd be tickled pink if it were small as 10% at vote weight 10. That's still a bukkitload of extra essence.

I forgot to check, but I think vote weight while fully dormant is actually zero. Even if it was just the same 1k that org members get, you'd then just have to have at least as many active org members as dormant out of org members to even that part out, at least, and you'll still eat the drain from the ones who are active.

Alternatively, and what Estarra seems to be hoping for, gods would just boot anyone who's dormant and costing essence. It really sucks to be kicked for going inactive for a bit, but if you're just a drain on the order, it makes sense. If you want back in later, talk to your God when you get back.

EDIT: Also, if you're going to penalize foreign order members on their offerings, you may as well penalize enemies of the order too, so it makes some semblance of sense. Actually, to make sense, you'd penalize foreign order members, penalize people not in the order even more, then just make enemies unable to offer to that God. Makes sense but would be even harsher. I'd prefer to see a small bonus for being in the order and small bonus for being in the org, personally. Even a 1% boost for offering to the God you've pledged too would end up being noticed.

Think of it as the penalty is for traitorous people. At least I imagine that's the thinking behind it. If an Order is going to have people in it that are traitorous to the Order's ideals, then the Order needs to pay for that privilege. I do agree that it's somewhat of a leap that being in a different city/commune is necessarily a breach of ideals, but it's not that far off.

If they were traitorous the Divine wouldn't let them join in the first place.

I think its the Lusternia admin going back to the tactics of the original Bartel paper.

Two cents:

If this was intended as a limiter for the gods, remove the offering penalty (because it's silly and inconsistent -- unordered members of that org don't get a penalty), change how much essence is drained, remove that drain from the logs...and don't tell us. Simply state that it was lowered. Doesn't matter if it was reduced by 10% or 90%. All MMOs feed on numeric feedback. If we see our characters causing harm, the natural response is to stress over it until we fix it.

If this was intended as a deterrent to the players, I still think you should reconsider your stance.

I can understand penalties from the perspective of trying to limit the order to only one city or commune, but a more reward-based system would fare better in terms of player reception. If it's strictly reward-based, with no penalties at all for distant members, then there is no discouraging factor and thus no limiting of members to one city or commune. It is against logic, however, to penalize order members more than enemies or non-members.

I think being ignorable in terms of player reception is exactly what she doesn't want. She wants to actively discourage it, not just not encourage it as much.

That's what I was saying, though. It should be shifted a bit more towards reward-based, but the penalties still need to be kept (and maybe increased, as I doubt it's really working as intended). It makes little sense that an order enemy could offer for more essence than a loyal-but-distant order member.

The real problem with making the rewards better for loyal-not-distant members is that you don't want to just offset the penalties and make it ignorable. (Is that what you meant, maybe?)

This, however, is not actively encouraging people to align with Orders in their own city/commune. I'd classify this as over-passive-aggressive. As far as I can tell, the divine themselves IC are not actively pursuing this course of action. As far as a loyal character is concerned, they won't give up their Divine unless their Divine tells them too. They will work and work and work to overcome this penalty and stay loyal to their god.

If you want people to leave their current Orders and join one in their own nation, you will have to actively convince them to do so. Get the IC Divine involved. Teach people the virtues of only being in an Order connected to their nation.

By simply springing an unforseen and MAJOR penalty on people for actually playing the finer points of the game, you are only galvanizing their dedication to that part of the game. I understand the reasoning behind Order Affinity, but Order Affinity is not the right way to reach the goals you are looking for. So long as Order Affinity hangs in the background and is the only deterrent to joining a foreign Order, people will continue to do so.

Be active. Ban foreign citizens in Orders, either mechanically or ICly through the Divine. Don't be passive aggressive and try to make it seem like it is the players' choice. The players made their choice already, against Order Affinity working like it was supposed to. They aren't going to move on their own. They'll leave the game first.

I'd actually like to take this point in a different direction. This provides no incentive to align a character with an order from his home org. Instead, it only provides a disincentive to align a character with an order from a foreign org. Unless you're the sort who wants an order only to say you have an order (in which case you'll happily settle for an order you want less), this is effectively the same as discouraging order membership in general.

This is my issue. If Sylphas wasn't Maylean (and if Lyreth were active), he'd probably have ended up there. Except, Lyreth is a Celestian god, so he'd probably just go orderless. I loved the tension when he was considering Shikari's order as Hierophant (didn't happen for obvious reasons, but he talked with Him a lot and I loved it). Affinity is just a disincentive to use the order system.

I also agree with Everiine. The best way to get people into their home orders and out of foreign orders is to poke the Divine on an OOC level, tell them what the plan is, have them implement it IC how they see fit. Affinity had no IC explanation and was simply sprung on players in an announce post. People who really care will simply work harder to overcome the penalty, and your goal of getting them into local orders is still unmet. Inactive players are simply acting as a harsh penalty on the order with no way of overcoming it (and probably without even knowing what's going on). And people who simply don't care won't go anywhere and will just drain and drain and drain. I'm in the position now of trying to figure out how to say to Maylea "can you just boot this list of a dozen people, please?" while being diplomatic about it--it's not really something one should say to their God, imo, especially when it's a system whose entire IC grounding is the LISTOFFERINGS lines for the essence gain/drain. It would be a lot easier on everyone if there was a push starting from the Divine on down to purge the order of foreign members (at least inactive members or ones who make zero effort to interact with the order) instead of the other way around.

Estarra's said she's willing to consider 'more' incentives to join an aligned order - I, for one, am at a proverbial 'lack' as to what they would be, but maybe you all might have better luck than I did?

I think if you stick/hang on to removing the disincentive, your discussion will get nowhere. As a mild suggestion, if that is actually the intent of your discussion, I would move forward without thinking about the passive drain (or pretend the passive drain/gain will stay exactly as it is) - think about ways to encourage membership, etc.

And, I know Eventru has given several people ultimatums - and stripped several others of their rank and position for staying out of Celest, removed a few people, etc. So we're not ignoring it! Granted, he only has like three members out there, so...

I honestly think the only way to do that are 1) provide more personal benefits to order members (which I think has bad big-picture effects), or 2) have more selection. By default, you start looking in a character's home pantheon. If you don't like the choices there, you look beyond.

Take, for example, Celest. Your order choices there are basically flamboyant or different flavors of inactivity. If you don't want flamboyant and aren't feeling very tolerant of inactive, is it any wonder that people start to look at Maylea, Elostian, Kalikai, or other Light-neutral gods?

I don't claim to know what all goes into administrating volunteer work, but a little growth up top can't hurt.

There is always the option to go orderless.

You'd have to really perk up Orders. Right now they're used as organizational weapons. You join either because the god really matches your character or because you want to pop shrine powers for raids. Gods matching your character gets really tough if you restrict it to in-org only. Serenwilde has Maylea and Lisaera as active gods. If you don't like them, you have no order.

Part of this could just be order members really going out and proselytizing and talking up the order and holding events and such, and that would be wonderful and I'm hoping to so some of this. But the simple mechanics are still not a draw. Shrine powers are mostly to counter raiding. Most of them are not worth their cost. I've been popping shrine heal a ton lately with karma, but I'm the only one I've ever really seen do it, probably because I could just grab a Life blessing instead and sip/scroll/sparkle for more without having to come up with 20% karma per hour.

RP only perks would be lovely. I love order items, and if they did more it would be awesome. More custom emotes, items to certain ranks of the order or in the temple to help with rituals and such (kind of like guilds got the ritual thing that gives a small xp boost, like Achaean Rites of Dawn), stuff like that. We really don't need any more combat buffs, but RP stuff is always lovely.