Developing the Ministry of Religions
 

Acolyte, Priest, and High Priest are momentary placeholders that have been put into place to allow the rank system's final form to be implemented. Now that it has been finished, we can start fine tuning the ranks, personalizing them, attaching requirements and duties, and similar such things.

This is the discussion thread for player based ideas on the way to develop the ministry of religion, seeing as how it seems to be the most popular. Once I have heard some ideas, I will put down my suggestions and see if everyone's ideas can be meshed into it.

Please realize however, that I want there to be steep requirements to advance between the ranks, so that the ranks will actually MEAN something. Also realize, that I would like to attach regular jobs to each of the ranks. They should gradually increase in difficulty per rank, but not ask too much of the beginners who may find their way into the entry ranks.

I understand why you are making level 20 wisdom a requirement to advance Acolyte - Priest, but from a beginners POV, thats quite a huge requirement. I personally believe you have to EARN the rank, rather than just proving you have the ability to grind with your avatar for countless hours. If you want to have a widom cap from Acolyte to Priest, it should be around 13. After you reach level 10 wisdom, gaining mass experience gets tougher, and for most of the young players the ability to destroy a brutal or immense map isnt possible.

In my Opinion;

Proving yourself worthy of advancing through the ranks;
1.) Obtain a High Rank Spell or Relic
2.) Being able to Summon the Avatar of their god (Shows there is a half decent level in wisdom)
3.) Being able to restore people. (During and After battles.)

Those are good functional requirements. To put things in perspective I was thinking of considerably higher wisdom requirement for high priest, like 40.

There are certain functional benefits that come from a higher wisdom level. Higher damage, more powerful avatars, more successful healing, more healing period, and greater amounts of created food.

Ideally once the system gets established, it shouldn't be too much harder for more advanced players to help the acolytes develop their powers. As you point out though, 20 wisdom may be excessive. It may be dropped to 15.

There's like what? Three active players with a wisdom level of 40 or higher in the entire server?

John, Fr0 and who knows. Some other glitching scrub most likely.

Did he un-quit?

I dunno, I saw him online a couple days ago.

So how about the name for the new acolyte rank?

Something that sounds like a wanderer. A wandering monk or something. Let's say... IF we had roadside shrines, on which offerings could be made, then what would be the name for a person who goes around collecting the donations?

Shrine Keeper sounds like too high of a rank for entry level, although it wouldn't be high enough for priest... (or maybe it would be just perfect to replace Priest.)

On the flip side, those examples are awfully oriental sounding (and would thus be better left for Samurai to develop) but oriental cultures were not the only cultures to develop roadside shrines.

Would anyone have any suggestions on how to use a road-like shrine idea with a more celtic/germanic and/or aquatic feel to it?

I have five jobs in mind for the acolyte.

One is handing out +1 (limited to +1 by honor system) blessings for their god for a small "donation" to their church, based upon the value of the blessing in the player market. For popular gods, this is a functional job. For unpopular gods, this would be more of the RP-focus for the acolyte.

Two is handing out 'blessings' on the player by using the bless spell for small monetary donations to whoever is willing to donate. Personal blessings may not be as useful as weapon blessings, there shall be a fair amount of research to determine which blessings are indeed useful. (And there is at least one very useful blessing) And their use would determine their cost. The most useful of which would probably not require a donation much more then 10 plat.

Three is helping maintain the shrines run by the priests. This wouldn't involve MUCH... just a couple of percentages here and there. We wouldn't want to overburden beginners with too much work.

Four is helping to gather religion related items, which will include both practical and RP. (Prayerbooks primarily for practical (as decided upon by the priest/high priest)) and RP items, such as flowers of all kinds for Brigid.

Aside from that there's the obvious partaking in events.

All that's left is an alternative name for them.

Which is pretty much zero for a +1 blessing. I guess a player might be willing to "give a donation" for it if the "donation" was less than they'd get by selling it to an NPC.

Indeed, this is more of an RP background which is has a small practical use, allows acolytes to help out beginner players who may have a harder time affording (and sometimes convincing) a person to give them a higher blessing.

We can save the full market prices for better blessings for the priests.

By which you mean you're trying to generate totally arbitrary RP.

Please expand on this opinion. It doesn't make enough sense by itself and I'm not sure what you mean by "arbitrary RP".

i think he means, your trying to get everyone to rp all the time or something.

Oh, it doesn't have to be all the time. Not all of it has to be done all the time. But I think it would provide a nice way for a person to RP when they wanted to. Most the 'just words' RP's are kinda slow and forced and not everyone seems to enjoy them for that reason.

I figure as long as there's a bunch of stuff TO DO there's something to work with. Next time an acolyte asks how to RP, just tell'im the previously listed stuff.

If nothing else at all, those are the 'duties' that could be fulfilled during RP events or something. It'll work out somehow.

You're not trying to get people to RP in order to enhance their playing experience, you're just trying to get your members to RP in order to increase the total "amount" of RP.

Graal Kindoms is a roleplaying server made to interact, role play and chat with other players! I dont see anything wrong if he enforces RP in his kingdom.

The logic of argument seems to be trying to say:

Increasing the total "amount" of RP will not enhance playing experience.

Is this correct?

If it is, my answer is:

Increasing the overall RP to make spontaneous personal RP easier. Experimenting around to find the magic combination of RP background and duties for ranks so that people can have fun actually doing it. Once a person gets in the mood acting out the basic stuff they're told how to act out, then they can add their own personal touch to the stuff they're already doing. The alternative is gathering a bunch of people together and saying, "Good, now RP." and leave them hanging. And... if a person DOESN'T want to RP, this is just a laundry list of things they can do to shut the more dedicated RP'ers up, and get on with playing the game however they want to play it.

I fully acknowledge that what he's doing is within his authority if that's what you mean.

No, that's putting it too simply. Increasing the total amount of RP will enhance the playing experience if you do it in a way that uses RP to enhance the playing experience. Increasing the total amount of RP won't enhance the playing experience if you do it in a way that doesn't enhance the playing experience (which is what you're trying to do.)

If blessing things to +1 and then selling them at sub-NPC prices is so much fun, there would be a bunch of people who've been doing it for a long time, and presumably one of them would be you (since you seem to be suggesting that it's fun to do.)

What you seem to be saying here is that you want people to RP during their day-to-day 2K2 activities (in other words, you want to make 2K2 a primarily RP server). If this is the case, do you at least acknowledge that 2K2 is structurally opposed to being an RP server? Do you acknowledge that others, including staff, have tried to make 2K2 a primarily RP server and failed because of this structural opposition?

That's pretty much what you're doing here.

Your arguments have now succifiently contradicted themselves, stated 'truths' that are obviously false, and have now strayed too far from the original purpose of the thread. I have made my point, and it still stands. If you don't like it, too bad.

Man, I wonder if there's anyone who actually takes people seriously when the make statements like these without backing them up.

I think pretty much everyone understand them as "Yea, well.. UR MA" style statements.

Alright. Acolytes will become known as Novices.

Novices will help provide blessings (both weaponry and personal) for small donations.

Novices will help maintain the roadside shrines run by the priests and gather the required offerings for the specific diety, as well as gather prayer related spellbooks that the priests desire.

Novices may also be required to help during kingdom events.

Now that is out of the way.

Priest.... do we keep as priest... or use another name. I'm thinking of monk.

Alright...

I'm done with this thread. I'll wait until we have a priest before I start tryiing to change it around.