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Question about blessings
Aloli
Between Books
Hey everyone,
I am wondering what things look like on the 'other side' when it comes to Divine blessings, favors, and boons and what the generally accepted etiquette is on this.
My opinion has always been that a blessing which comes from a specific deity at a certain time or event has more meaning and encouragement than one I would get for hunting/offering. However, I feel it simply rude to just ask for a blessing when you want to go hunting for a few days. Still, some people tell me that's the only way they end up having blessings to hunt - by asking in their orders. The blessings do affect your stats and gold drops in some hunting areas, so this has become something really sought after and helps in PK.
What would happen if the Gods had two different kinds of blessings?
TL;DR Do you normally ask for blessings and pray not to get smote instead? Do you keep offering till they take notice? Do you often find yourself with multiple blessings at once?
I am wondering what things look like on the 'other side' when it comes to Divine blessings, favors, and boons and what the generally accepted etiquette is on this.
My opinion has always been that a blessing which comes from a specific deity at a certain time or event has more meaning and encouragement than one I would get for hunting/offering. However, I feel it simply rude to just ask for a blessing when you want to go hunting for a few days. Still, some people tell me that's the only way they end up having blessings to hunt - by asking in their orders. The blessings do affect your stats and gold drops in some hunting areas, so this has become something really sought after and helps in PK.
What would happen if the Gods had two different kinds of blessings?
- Automated and runs on how much a person offers, which results in them getting a boon, favor, or blessing, could come with a message that says it's automated and issued by that deity's priest or priestess for helping bolster their essence and shrine power?
- Personalized/flavored that carries more lore weight than stat support?
TL;DR Do you normally ask for blessings and pray not to get smote instead? Do you keep offering till they take notice? Do you often find yourself with multiple blessings at once?
Between what is said and not meant, and what is meant and not said, most of love is lost. - Khalil Gibran
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Best Answers
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Silena
Immortal
This is just my personal opinion and I know that not everyone in the pools agrees, but this is a worthwhile discussion:
I don't like the concept of automated blessings, for both practical and rp reasons. On the practical side, I look at both raw numbers per person and the total number of offerings, and take it all into consideration when blessing. It's not something that would be simple to automate. On the rp side... it's just more personal feeling. I like having to type out the command for each person.
I doubt non-stat blessings would ever have the same impact, regardless of lore. It might still be a neat thing to have, but mechanics generally inform rp motivations.
On asking gods, I'd imagine it depends on the god. I can remember only one person ever asking me, and I did bless them. My response would depend on 1. Who they are(order member vs random newbie) 2. Why they're asking, 3. How polite the request is, and 4. How many times they've asked before. But otherwise, I would view it as a relatively minor request, and something that any mortal is free to ask for.1 -
As a player, I have a tremendous amount of fun with the god my character serves in the order of. They're absolutely fantastic when they are around. I would never want to take a tool from them that makes them feel more effective or deific as a character. Having volunteered elsewhere, it sometimes feels crumby if you have no way to reward good behavior or a badass moment or whatever. I don't care too much that they don't hand me blessings like candy, because my combat viability does not necessarily reflect on them on a meta level. All that said, I would say it's thematically appropriate that gods should bless their orderheads heavily, but it's up to the volunteer clearly.
That being said and all that aside...
Blessings carry an indisputable weight as an aspect of being buffed and ready for combat. The audit bonus, the stats, both are very useful. It feels like Spirit rarely gets blessings and I feel like Shadow receives them with greater frequency based on anecdotal evidence and their own admittance to me. Maybe it's just Duiran's crowd? I don't know. I often find myself counting down the days until the season shift so I can beseech Haern again and that is frustrating. This lower frequency means I am at a mechanical disadvantage to the tune of 3000 credits. That's a lot of power.
I do not think the solution is taking away the power of blessings. That's just asking to take blessings out of a god's toolbox in a different way: if you don't replace it with something as appealing, you have diminished the power to bless and, with it, the player behind the god. Not cool. If you replace it with something else powerful, well... we'll be back in this thread next summer.
I think the solution is letting OR10 (so, theoretically, the Highest Mortal Authority if every order is structured like Omei's) able to bless people within their order, including themselves, scaling with cost and duration based on the target's order rank. Put a cooldown on it or whatever that makes it hard to keep yourself permanently blessed or else make it prohibitively costly, I don't care. I don't take credit for this idea, but figured I'd put it out there.1
Answers
Again suggesting the ability for an orderhead to bless the order for a given amount of time at a higher essence cost or something.
But we do have such a special artifact available.
Edit: To show prayer mat artifact power:
READNEWS ANNOUNCE 2587
a prayer mat
With the prayer mat, using the BESEECH ability will give you a 3 day blessing, instead of a 1 day
blessing. Only works for the owner.
I will add, though, that if the problem is the value of stats, it makes more sense to remove that benefit rather than make it available to everyone 24/7. Mechanically, that should work out the same.
I can see how a non-mechanical blessing would feel less significant, it was just a thought to try to bring a little balance because I feel there's more active dark than light Gods unless there's something that draws their attention. So if having two kinds of blessings might dilute the meaning of them, maybe Stine's suggestion is something to look into?
Order heads usually take it upon themselves to help replenish whatever shrine energy they lose for their Gods or motivate others to help.
The Research Divinity ability lets you get a blessing once a year. A year is a very long time nowadays, considering the number of Foci fights we can into between.
@Rhyot Thanks for reminding me about the prayer mat! Since you're saying you don't use the prayer mat, is it meant to be a 3-day blessing once a year or every 3 days?
@Fezzix: All we can do is boon the order, not the congregation, that costs shrine energy which is different from the essence pool, as I understand. When you offer a corpse you give shrine energy and essence per corpse.
I suppose the flip side of Stine's suggestion is to take that stat boosts away but that brings the question: what would be a good replacement?
Slightly sarcastic: what other options could there be if we all love blessings and the effects they give and want them all the time? Is this beginning to sound like we want a way to even out our beloved Gods doting?
Removing the stat boots from blessings simply leaves them open to be part of other things instead of PK. One example could be adding a -very small- chance to getting higher drop rates from the new hunting system.
It sounds pretty awful to be a spirit player.
i think those two may have the bulk of order members/congregants between them, but i don't think any of the others are handing out blessings all that often? it's like once in a blue moon that i'll get one from tanix... does ivoln even exist still? uhhhh... who else again? chak is about as frequent a blesser as tanix. etc.
granted, those two quite possibly *are* blessing more frequently/for longer stretches than any spirit god - i really don't know. i only mean to point out that shadow only has two gods that are known to hand out blessings like candy.
~personally~, i don't care too much either way about blessings, but that could be because i'm not used to having them. vyx's first order was slyphe (when they were mostly not around), then she refused to join an order for a solid chunk of time when she first went shadow. now i'm in tanix's order, and the odd blessing is usually kind of a surprise. i sometimes don't realize i had a blessing until i get the message saying it wore off. the only reason i wish i (or some other order member - although, let's be real, it's basically just me) could keep the order booned is so we wouldn't lose essence from deaths. generally, though, i definitely wouldn't miss blessings all that much.
but to be clear? i think i'm pretty atypical in that regard. seems like most people are pretty attached to their blessings, and those blessings make a not-inconsequential difference for newbies desperately trying to grind their way to endgame.
Edit: To make it clear, when I mentioning separating the stat bonuses out, I mean making them more accessible in another way, as has been mentioned.
But I also do alot of religion RP stuff, as well as targetted RP towards Gods to get that recognition, from both Shadow and Spirit Gods.
Truth be told I have been offering to Bamathis since the last event, and have not gotten a favour yet (not that I mind, I have RP reason for offering to Bamathis currently because I vowed I would to help them regain essence after the last battle. And as Cardinal I feel it important to uphold my word.)
I pretty consistently do have a blessing from Damariel/Ethne for various deeds and things I do around the City. Which I am very appreciative for mind you, it is helpful, but even as Cardinal being only able to boon, and Order Head, only able to boon, (especially with an absent divine) I think a blessing would be more helpful especially, and if I could afford it to the Congregation and NOT just the Order ---because how do I spark Congregation activity, with an absent divine, at least there is something I can give in recognition if I can bless them.
I'm prettyI started to write my own response and realized it invoked a feeling so strong and someone else already said, much more level headed, than I would have been able to do so.This, so much of this.
That said, I've played both tethers actively and know for a fact on shadow you can almost always count on having 2 or more blessings running constantly if you're offering which I'd say is appropriate. That's not the case on spirit side for some reason. I'm not bashing either tethers gods or calling for nerfs on shadow at all but there should be equal balance with anything that increases audit like this.
But I sympathize with the mechanical side of it, too, and I don't want either side to have a disadvantage in pk, for whatever reason. The problem is, if blessings were significantly easier to get(by reducing the time for divinity or allowing OH's to bless), to the point where anyone could have multiple at any time... then it'd be far less effort on those poor coders to just remove the mechanical benefits entirely. Which would still suck, at least for newbies.