Blessings

Buford

This discussion was created from comments split from: Ankyrean Anguish - Aetolia-based RAGE.

Macavity

I rage at the current god favors!  I have not seen one go out to Bloodloch in a VERY long time and it seems the parton, @Isoyne, only favors her congregation and not the city.   Its like hello, how about spread it around to others whos gods are gone or not bothering to favour their orders and what not for whatever reason.   

and yes I know its really up to the gods to do what they want but still its insane as its been weeks since I have had a favour!

Trigru

Have you considered asking Her in-character?

Macavity

Trigru said:

Have you considered asking Her in-character?

its hard to speak to a god that does not show themselves, and I have sent messages to @Niuri and get no answers back at all, despite Neoma and myself trying to keep the order going.  

Rivas

Iosyne is more vis than almost any other god I've seen lately, dude, and that's including the practically non-existent Lighter gods these days. Try sending Iosyne (an active, visible divine) a message instead of Niuri (someone who's been inactive for unicorns-knows-how-long) and you MIGHT get better results.


But, y'know...be polite and respectful and junk. She don't owe you nothin'.

Ezalor

Bloodloch is apparently so large (remember that -every- citizen gets blessed, even if they haven't logged on for years) that blessing it takes an insane amount of essence. Soooo if you want a personal blessing actually going about offering wouldn't be a terrible way to get one.

Macavity

Ezalor said:

Bloodloch is apparently so large (remember that -every- citizen gets blessed, even if they haven't logged on for years) that blessing it takes an insane amount of essence. Soooo if you want a personal blessing actually going about offering wouldn't be a terrible way to get one.

easy way to fix that would be to code into the favours to remove those that are no longer active much like how they are removed from RANKINGS.  That would save the essence cost.  also my rage is really in general, as my character has access to 4 gods, Ivoln, Niuri, Iosyne, and Maghak, and in the last year the contest that I ran for Niuir brought in over 68 million essence total, which is way more than any one person could bring in, in the same amount of time and still nothing.  

Its rather discouraging to follow a God that does not wake from an IC and OOC stand point.  We all have been there from one point in time to another.

Damonicus

For me Mac, a blessing is and should be used for a reward. If I remember correctly one of the Divine said way back when it costs 20 million a day essence to bless a city. Where an individual blessing is maybe under 2 mil. If I was a god, I would bless those of my order and cong first because you know they are offering and working towards spreading the name and wait until my city did something outstanding to reward them. BESEECH IOSYNE FOR BLESSING also gives you a one day blessing, maybe if you hunt and offer for her she will reward you for that. Yes, blessings are great, but I think we got a little spoiled after awhile when the religeon tree doubled the days of Blessings and such.

Draiman

Blessings aren't a reward, they are a necessity.

Toz

110% what Draiman said. This game has been balanced around favors and omni-trans. When favors aren't present, everything is harder.

Aishia

Saybre

Daskalos said:

I used to say 'hey, I'm not going to use XYZ' against someone because they wouldn't use it against me, but the fact is, everything gets used against me.  Everything. And the thing is, I only started using it after insanely scaling damage was done against me time and again.

Keroc once told me 'Why do you not use what's at your disposal? Nothing is going to stop them from using it against you, leave it to us to decide what's balanced and what's not and use what you've got.'

It changed my outlook, and the thing is, Draiman, is that for every respectable opponent like you, there's an equally disreputable one. To get the speed I'm DSW'ing at, it takes:

Purity Aura (+2 str)

Blessing +1STR

Level 3 Streth (2500cr, +3)

Starchart (Artifact)

Dice (artifact, cost me over 4000cr at auction).

Level 3 rune on warhammer (800cr?)

I'm a min-maxer a lot of times and in this case, I've done that to an extreme level.

But the thing is, it's NOT just DSW that's a problem. It's Carnifex hammers, it's Bastard swords being used with BB that are artifacted up.

The difference is that people would defend it when it was their own skill, but when I do it, it's suddenly a problem because when I expose a problem, I expose it. Look at Magic Potence - we were taking insane damage from a ton of magic sources because of Magic Potence scaling, so it was made to only work on specific skills. Did it nerf me? Yep. Did it nerf a lot of other people and help balance the artifact overall? Yep.

You can't complain about DSW without including -all- damage scaling on weapons. A big part of the problem is that an active measure was taken to make classes less tanky, through things like warmth being reduced to 5% from 10%, et cetera, but nothing was done to keep it all in tow. For me to fight in Templar and survive a straight damage onslaught requires a huge amount of preparation. You have no idea how unbelievably squishy Templars are. I know people that bash in SYSSIN because it's tankier.

 

Me, I am this person.
I -love- Templar, I have always played Knight, was Paladin man, loved it etcetra. Templar is more badass (although I do miss falcons, but at least I have a minipet)

But dear lord, we are sooo squishy. I would kill just to have something like Weathering back honestly.

I bash in Syssin OR Lycan OR Monk now, because I can survive without stressing to fire PULSE (Idreth SHIFT) all the time, even with +3 Con, +3 Sip, +2 enhance, AND running +2 Con aura. It's ridiculous (If I don't have blessing I also run +1 via starchart, otherwise that goes to Strength).

I'm not just talking about elemental damage either, for some -weird- reason, even with the best armor in the game, I can still get stomped comparatively. Lesser fights get me targetted first since I hit like a train, and I can get overwhelmed so easily (I know this happens to Belgarion too).

I did suggest that AURA ABSORB be changed. Presently it does a heal off a timer (somewhere between 800-1000) which helps, but it also removes a blessing, without even telling you which one, which takes time to put back up. Since blessings are core to our defense (and offense) it really isn't viable in combat, nor is it viable in bashing in a lot of cases, since it could drop something like..protection, or healing.

It'd be nice if the timer got increased, but DIDN'T remove the blessing itself. At the very least have it tell us which one, so I can throw it up before next attack round, but that would still suck.

tl;dr

Templar are squishy as heck.

Teani

Or, you know, don't count on blessings/favors/boons? They're not required to give -any- out, so see it as a bonus when you actually do get favored by the Gods. That's how it's supposed to feel for the characters. 

"Wow... one of the Gods noticed little -me-! I guess I did something right!"

Ezalor

PK is, however, balanced around blessings. When I'm taking 25% of my maxhp in damage per whack from people while blessed I'd die in 10 seconds unblessed.

Draiman

I don't think they should be what they are. Maybe have them only effect pve. If the damage is being looked at like Xavin said now might be a good time to readjust for blessings and/or change blessings as well.

Daskalos

Even bashing is balanced around blessings to an extent. There are places that I can handle easily and then suddenly I'm dying and it's like 'oh, wait, no blessing'.

Part of it is the change to research trees, now blessings only last 3 days instead of 6, so it's harder to maintain them. Man, I miss the days of getting 300 day blessings

Daskalos

[quote]I'm not just talking about elemental damage either, for some -weird- reason, even with the best armor in the game, I can still get stomped comparatively. Lesser fights get me targetted first since I hit like a train, and I can get overwhelmed so easily (I know this happens to Belgarion too). [/quote]

This. People just focus fire me first at leylines now, whereas before in Luminary while I'm tanky, my kill route is so slow you didn't have to focus fire me. Now, I'm the opposite, high offense, kill people fast, but I also die fast so I just get eliminated quickly. It really depends on who I'm teaming with whether I go damage or for retribution. If I'm teaming with someone that can throw out afflictions, I usually go retri, if I'm teaming with other damage users, damage it is.

Haven

Blessings really should be made automated. Perhaps, if you offer X then proceed to the gods high priest then you'll be blessed for X hours/days/months.

Then if the gods desired, they could make hand out "High Blessings" that are varied and unique but more about flavor/privileges than mechanical advantages directly related to survivability.

An example of what a High Blessing could offer would be something like the following:

• High Blessing of Ire/Fury/whatever: Temporary custom/special deathsight message related to X god
• High Blessing of the Paragon/Avatar/whatever: Temporary access to a special/unique race directly related/representation of X god. May unlock special/unique racial abilities (flavour or possibly quality of life or whatever so long as it's not related to combat/survivability)
• High Blessing of the Voidwalker/Explorer/whatever: Temporary access to a special plane that contains lore and fun quests or something unique related to the god. Perhaps Dhar dons a cloak of resistance on your shoulder that allows you to swim in the Abysmal Sea in His Underhall that'd normally kill you.

The gods could even flip it and make unique High Curses/Hexes. With changes like these, blessings can be earned and help fund the gods their essence and keep things moving and players busy while also allowing the higher ups to still hand out rewards that don't drastically affect a player's ability to compete against other players in their day to day activities.

Azton

Haven said:

Blessings really should be made automated. Perhaps, if you offer X then proceed to the gods high priest then you'll be blessed for X hours/days/months.

Then if the gods desired, they could make hand out "High Blessings" that are varied and unique but more about flavor/privileges than mechanical advantages directly related to survivability.

An example of what a High Blessing could offer would be something like the following:

• High Blessing of Ire/Fury/whatever: Temporary custom/special deathsight message related to X god
• High Blessing of the Paragon/Avatar/whatever: Temporary access to a special/unique race directly related/representation of X god. May unlock special/unique racial abilities (flavour or possibly quality of life or whatever so long as it's not related to combat/survivability)
• High Blessing of the Voidwalker/Explorer/whatever: Temporary access to a special plane that contains lore and fun quests or something unique related to the god. Perhaps Dhar dons a cloak of resistance on your shoulder that allows you to swim in the Abysmal Sea in His Underhall that'd normally kill you.

The gods could even flip it and make unique High Curses/Hexes. With changes like these, blessings can be earned and help fund the gods their essence and keep things moving and players busy while also allowing the higher ups to still hand out rewards that don't drastically affect a player's ability to compete against other players in their day to day activities.

PLEASE GOD NO!!!

Can we can back on to rage? instead of crying about blessing... OFFER to the active gods!!

I rage at the IdleDwarf bringing around all the idling people.. its good for aetolia as it has 'lots of people awake' but bad for the community when you're trying to get things done and the people are just not with it

Haven

Just out of curiosity, why do you believe automated blessings would be a bad thing?

Draiman

Yeah, no, Azton. This is still a RP game, and Draiman has sold his soul to Iosyne. If she goes inactive for whatever reason I'm not going to offer to whoever is active for just so I can level the playing field. I did it to get End Game but it was annoying guessing who was going to be around when my blessings wore off, and more than once I guessed wrong and didn't offer enough to the active God.

Arbre

One time I flat out told Aure I was offering to Dhar because He needed it and She was like okay cool.

Angwe

Yeah, Haern's people offer to other gods all the time, especially friendly gods who're going through some conflict.

Toz

Y'all don't understand. Iosyne was mad she didn't get MY baby. You think she's gonna be happy you're giving someone else her stuff? Where's Lin, we need an Over-Attached God meme stat.

Azton

I only offer to one god and I get blessings all the time, So you're doing it wrong! .....

Automated blessings seems stupid as someone said ITS A RP GAME not an automated game! EARN YOUR BLESSINGS if the god goes 'inactive' normally its because 1 or 2 reasons.... 1 person stepped down and 2 the person is busy Changing it to be automated isn't going to help that.... Its just going to make things more stupid...

The question you all should be asking is, HOW can you full the vacant admin places... instead of trying to rework how blessings work!

Toz

How can I fill a vacant admin spot? Well, I can't. I'd be rather impressed if you could. To put things very simply, there is a hard-coded requirement for blessings. This has nothing to do with RP whatsoever. There is no RP that can make me take 10% less damage. It would be a violation of my RP to abruptly stop offering to one god and start offering to another in an attempt to gain a coded benefit. Altering roleplay to gain a coded benefit is the direct, most obvious definition of metagaming. Therefore, while there is a coded requirement for something, a need, there should exist some form of coded way to get said ability. Imagine if you will, being unable to use the focus command at all unless some other player remembered to log in and execute a command every few days - it is a similar situation here.

EDIT: Furthermore, the assertion that making it automated won't fix the problem is entirely, absurdly, wildly incorrect. The problem is that god x, y, z, and q are not logging in/blessing orgs. This means said orgs/groups are without a blessing, which things are balanced around, and thus at a mechanical disadvantage. An automated system to provide for a god not being present is a coded workaround to avoid the problem of requiring the god to log in/do blanket favors - people being able to get what they need will remove the problem. It may not be the most roleplay-appropriate way to fix it, but it certainly does solve the problem in its entirety.

Xarian

Azton said:

I only offer to one god and I get blessings all the time, So you're doing it wrong! .....

Automated blessings seems stupid as someone said ITS A RP GAME not an automated game! EARN YOUR BLESSINGS if the god goes 'inactive' normally its because 1 or 2 reasons.... 1 person stepped down and 2 the person is busy Changing it to be automated isn't going to help that.... Its just going to make things more stupid...

The question you all should be asking is, HOW can you full the vacant admin places... instead of trying to rework how blessings work!

This is a pretty stupid/self-contradictory stance. As you say, ITS A RP GAME, so why should players, who are roleplaying by following a certain deity, be punished when OOC events happen, like when a god steps down? Having automated blessings means that you can consistently roleplay your character, without being punished if there isn't someone in pools who can play that deity at the moment. What you're actually asking is for people to break their roleplay, in order to gain a mechanical advantage. What we're asking for is a mechanical fix to a problem that occurs when people follow their roleplay.

Damonicus

We have an automated blessing, religion tree, Beseech patron for blessing. DONE!

Azton

NOTHING is balanced around blessings, thats just a nice buff/luxury lol......

Can some Mod make a new thread for BLESSINGS and get it out of rage?

Aarbrok

In my experience, Blessings have been a reward for interactions and offerings.  Iosyne has given me hidden blessings as a person in Haerns order for discussions on her tenets or even facing Her followers in duels for various reasons.  Its just something you have to proactively seek or try to do.  Overall I have found getting a blessing way more rewarding that way.  You also have access to a City cardinal who you can contact as a religious resource, for sermons, which for the young ones, a CITYBOON can do alot and encourages a bit of comraderie.

Hell I still offer to Maghak sometimes, because light or dark, the gods represent certain ideals, you dont need have allegiance to show respect for another god. I think they would appreciate more the willingness to learn, even if it is against your RP, a little understanding goes a long way.

Daskalos

On what basis do you have to say PK isn't balanced around blessings? One liaison has already said it IS