Religions

[Draco Tanos]

I like the idea of religions persisting across continents. I know, the official answer is that "you can create it, but the game will treat them as separate." Fine by me! But that would give all of my characters the opportunity to join the same religion, which is quite common in real life.

The larger benefit would be that the same wiki pages would be used by more islands, which means more development. They could easily keep separate lists of temples, or just add a column "Island" to the existing list.

Question is...which religions are developed enough to survive a transplant?

Would love to see this.  Then priests wouldn't need to go warrior/etc before emigrating.  They could head to other continents and spread the faith.

[Perth]

They could head to other continents and spread the faith.

Battlemaster Missionaries! 

[De-Legro]

No, you are discrediting ideas that aim at correcting what is generally agreed upon (that religions are not what they could and ought to be) by ignoring obvious trends and the limited successes of those who tried what you preach (many fun and interesting religions were created over time, yet you don't see them representing a meaningful share of the existing religions).

I was going to rephrase this, but it can't be any more painlessly obvious. You said it quite clearly: you don't care if boring entities take up all the space and prevent interesting ones from taking over.

You pretend to want to improve things, while discrediting every suggestion to actually make it so. You sound like the government talking about the environment.

If boring entities are beating out the interesting religions, then they obviously are offering something that those players/characters WANT over what the "interesting" religion offers. Since the point of religions was never to "take over" anyway a interesting religion should satisfy the prime aim of religions, which is to offer a great RP experience to its members, I really don't see the issue. If you want to measure the success of your religion by the amount of members and regions you control, you will need more then just an interesting mythos.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

It could be that the concern is that religions would disappear without enough of a following, particularly in priests. I don't know about many economic systems, but the one I am familiar with goes that a business that can't beat its competitors usually folds or gets taken over, no matter how "interesting" it is. I'm not sure how much more realistic we want for our religions than the simple "stronger religion wins". It happened with real religions too...

[De-Legro]

That is my point, for all the complaining about the religion being boring, they obviously have a bigger in game following and from that point of view are stronger. I see no reason to hamper them with restrictions just so someone else's idea of what a "good" religion is can dominate. Besides what would this series of questions really add, the "fake" religions will just pick random answer, or a bland/non offensive combination and move on. We want good content for the RP and background in this game, not forced content. What next, should we appoint a panel that decides if a religion has a good enough mythos to be allowed to form in game?

[songqu88@gmail.com]

My opinion, which seems to have caused some dislike, is that the current religion system is already quite flexible and works for the purposes of this game. Maybe some things could be tweaked, such as ranks, but those were already brought up before. From what I can see and have experienced with religions, there is nothing glaringly lacking right now that would need such fixing, and I am very confident that religion does not play a significant role in drawing in new players, or keeping the interest of new players who have played less than a month.

[De-Legro]

I totally agree. The current system is flexible and works. I think that in some cases religions are good for drawing in new players, but only in the same way that an exciting realm is. If you happen to join a realm that has access to a religion that appeals to you, then obviously that will encourage the player to continue.

[Ender]

Would love to see this.  Then priests wouldn't need to go warrior/etc before emigrating.  They could head to other continents and spread the faith.

Just out of curiosity, do you lose your preaching skill when changing class away from Priest?

Honestly, it takes no time at all to be able to switch classes to priest compared to some other sub-classes like infiltrator. The only benefit I could see of having the priest class persist during emigration is if you lose preaching skill in the process.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Skills don't just disappear when you change classes.

[De-Legro]

For me the issue of changing class isn't about the inconvenience, its about breaking the immersion of the game. Having to change class because of a game mechanic reason then changing back just breaks the flow of the character for me. I also detest when I've been asked to drop my courtier sub class to better help a war effort with a bigger unit. I pick my classes for a reason and don't just swap and change at need.

[Bedwyr]

For me the issue of changing class isn't about the inconvenience, its about breaking the immersion of the game. Having to change class because of a game mechanic reason then changing back just breaks the flow of the character for me. I also detest when I've been asked to drop my courtier sub class to better help a war effort with a bigger unit. I pick my classes for a reason and don't just swap and change at need.

When were you asked to do that?  Sounds like an IR violation to me.

[Ender]

That actually is a fair point for the three main classes. Those are three ways of life one would probably be unlikely to just drop for a few weeks at a time. With the sub-classes though, it makes perfect sense why those arent immediately open in a new realm.

People asking you to switch Courtier for Warrior to help out a war effort is annoying, especially considering class choice is a player choice. I never like seeing things like that thrown around even if they are meant as suggestions since that alone sort of breaks into OOC territory as far as Im concerned.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Emigration doesn't change any classes though. The only discernible reason why priests can't emigrate is because right now religions are handled locally on each continent. If we are to have intercontinental religions, and also allow for the fact that some religions cannot or will not go to any other continents, that task does not sound like a very simple feature to implement. However, a real programmer might have a reliable opinion on that.

[De-Legro]

When were you asked to do that?  Sounds like an IR violation to me.

It certainly would have been if they had ordered me, or tried to punish me for not changing. As it was I just had to endure endless OOC messages about not being a "team" player.

[De-Legro]

Emigration doesn't change any classes though. The only discernible reason why priests can't emigrate is because right now religions are handled locally on each continent. If we are to have intercontinental religions, and also allow for the fact that some religions cannot or will not go to any other continents, that task does not sound like a very simple feature to implement. However, a real programmer might have a reliable opinion on that.

The main problem as I would see it, the database was not designed to link religions across islands. Without actually seeing the database this is all speculation, but it is likely to require a fair bit of change to the database before you can even start writing the code to handle it all.