As cool as it would be to be able to control Gods and make them log on / favour people / interact with us, I'm pretty sure that's outside my authorized task.
That said, I feel like the Wheel was originally intended to be a way of allowing people to get favours somewhat "as needed" without Divine input. However, the fact that coin generation got nerfed so hard (being unable to convert curios into coins) has made that much less feasible.
Wondering how guilds are going to look and all this talk about general stuff kinda seems to lose context (to me at least) when I can't see how it would affect me nor how different guilds would shape up.
Like, i'd like to see what my "maxed out" potential would, in theory, be as well as the average for my classes.
It seems like right now I could get to 7 or 9 universal with what appears to be considered "generally" available stuff, I just need to join Lisaera's order and have a shrine war. On the flipside, if I'm not in an order, or I choose to remain in Hoaracle's order for rp reasons without shrine powers or regular favours, that goes down to 4... (maybe 5 if I offer to Lisaera consistently)
2
Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
edited March 2015
I think the argument that guild RP choice should matter but order RP choice should not is a bizarre double standard. You can literally say the same things about being in one guild vs another and not having as much resistance and that being unfair because it forces "bad RP." It seems to me that the TF/order thing is more a matter of personal agenda than applying the same logic consistently across the board.
It just doesn't make any sense to say being in X guild with Y benefit is fine because it's Lusternia's uniqueness/diversity/interest. But to say the same about orders is "bad RP," "unfair," etc. This game, from the get go, has always mechanically encouraged everyone to be apart of things. Orgs, guilds, orders, etc. To now draw the line at orders is really inconsistent with how the rest of the game is built.
I don't have a problem with it. I think that's exactly how Lusternia is designed to function.
Order choice is 100% RP based. There aren't mechanical differences between orders - all of them use exactly the same mechanics. The only differences are from "Are you a member of an order Y/N?" and "Is your God active Y/N?"
Providing methods to get Order benefits while in an order with an inactive God or no order at all means that you're that much more free to choose the Order you like based on RP rather than on who will give you more truefavours. That's a good thing, in the same way your guild skills not turning off if your GM goes inactive is a good thing.
Personally, I'm in orders because I feel they're appropriate for my character. Originally, I was in Elcyrion's, then Elostian's, and now Hoaracle.
I'm probably going to stay with Hoaracle for a bit and if I move I would want it to be because I feel there is a reason for it beyond "Wooo favours and shrines yeah!".
I always thought that the point of orders was as an enhancement of your characters rp. That you should be in an order because your character and the god align in terms of beliefs/teachings/etc. The generic benefits mean that there shouldn't be a difference between orders.
But right now, there seems to be theorycrafting around numbers without the full context that they would be in.
Once guilds are actually in the sheet we can see which guilds would be tanky or not. Though with enough order stuff it seems like tanky just means you can hit level ten, while not tanky means you're stuck at level nine.
0
Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
Order choice is 100% RP based. There aren't mechanical differences between orders - all of them use exactly the same mechanics. The only differences are from "Are you a member of an order Y/N?" and "Is your God active Y/N?"
Providing methods to get Order benefits while in an order with an inactive God or no order at all means that you're that much more free to choose the Order you like based on RP rather than on who will give you more truefavours. That's a good thing, in the same way your guild skills not turning off if your GM goes inactive is a good thing.
Guild choice is RP based. Trying to seperate the two into types of RP choice isn't feesible, you're drawing an imaginary line. You're basically just arbitrarily choosing what is a valid choice for RP purposes and what is not. "Because guilds have differences," doesn't validate guild choice RP and "because order powers are the same," doesn't invalidate order RP. You want to eliminate the benefits of orders because it's what you want, and I get it, but lets not portray it as some sort of concern for game fairness.
I mean, I get the desire, but it feels like you're making it up as you go. It's misleading to state orders give true favors. You can be in an order and offer to an active God. You can split offerings. I did it all the time. Order powers also don't "turn off," when your God goes inactive, so there is really no "turning off," of order powers and TFs.
edit: I would also point out that the premise of this argument, that Guild/Org defenses and "RP" are fundamentally different from Order privs and "RP" because Order privs are the same for all Orders is hooey. This conversation would still exist, if not substantiallymore dramatic, if Orders had all different powers.
2
Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
But right now, there seems to be theorycrafting around numbers without the full context that they would be in.
Once guilds are actually in the sheet we can see which guilds would be tanky or not. Though with enough order stuff it seems like tanky just means you can hit level ten, while not tanky means you're stuck at level nine.
I am curious if the goal is to make the same levels of defenses available to everyone, and the differences between them are the ease at which they obtain it. For example, Shadowdancers have a ton of dmp so they are able to reach level 10 with class specific skills and not worry about shrine powers vs the glamours bard who has to stack all the shrine powers/whatever else to get to the same level. From a balance perspective, this makes the most sense, and is easier to build the game around. The downside is that it sucks to be an SD who all these skills cluttering up your ABs that are ultimately redundant, but more convenient.
Or are we trying to mimic the existing diversity of tankyness that currently exists. I.E Wiccans get level 10 with reasonable effort but a glamours bard can only hit 5 with the same effort.
edit: For selfish reasons I support the latter, for game health reasons I support the former with the caveat that envoy changes are allowed liberally for skills that become redundant.
But right now, there seems to be theorycrafting around numbers without the full context that they would be in.
Once guilds are actually in the sheet we can see which guilds would be tanky or not. Though with enough order stuff it seems like tanky just means you can hit level ten, while not tanky means you're stuck at level nine.
I am curious if the goal is to make the same levels of defenses available to everyone, and the differences between them are the ease at which they obtain it. For example, Shadowdancers have a ton of dmp so they are able to reach level 10 with class specific skills and not worry about shrine powers vs the glamours bard who has to stack all the shrine powers/whatever else to get to the same level. From a balance perspective, this makes the most sense, and is easier to build the game around. The downside is that it sucks to be an SD who all these skills cluttering up your ABs that are ultimately redundant, but more convenient.
Or are we trying to mimic the existing diversity of tankyness that currently exists. I.E Wiccans get level 10 with reasonable effort but a glamours bard can only hit 5 with the same effort.
The issue for me is that some of the posts appear to be leaning towards the diversity, while the system itself seems to be trending towards sameness.
I suppose the filpside, kinda, of the first argument is that the posts lead me to believe that the goal is to make divine "things" noticeable and have an effect, but if the SDs have the ability to easily get to 10 then they really don't need to care about that, as opposed to them having an effect for everyone.
But idk, if it's all samey then is there a point in making it hard for some and not for others?
Order choice is 100% RP based. There aren't mechanical differences between orders - all of them use exactly the same mechanics. The only differences are from "Are you a member of an order Y/N?" and "Is your God active Y/N?"
Providing methods to get Order benefits while in an order with an inactive God or no order at all means that you're that much more free to choose the Order you like based on RP rather than on who will give you more truefavours. That's a good thing, in the same way your guild skills not turning off if your GM goes inactive is a good thing.
Guild choice is RP based. Trying to seperate the two into types of RP choice isn't feesible, you're drawing an imaginary line. You're basically just arbitrarily choosing what is a valid choice for RP purposes and what is not. "Because guilds have differences," doesn't validate guild choice RP and "because order powers are the same," doesn't invalidate order RP. You want to eliminate the benefits of orders because it's what you want, and I get it, but lets not portray it as some sort of concern for game fairness.
I mean, I get the desire, but it feels like you're making it up as you go. It's misleading to state orders give true favors. You can be in an order and offer to an active God. You can split offerings. I did it all the time. Order powers also don't "turn off," when your God goes inactive, so there is really no "turning off," of order powers and TFs.
edit: I would also point out that the premise of this argument, that Guild/Org defenses and "RP" are fundamentally different from Order privs and "RP" because Order privs are the same for all Orders is hooey. This conversation would still exist, if not substantiallymore dramatic, if Orders had all different powers.
Dunno, to me the choice of a guild was purely mechanical. "Does the guild have a skill that allows melding?" Is the question I ask when I choose what to join. As to there being no "turning off" of order powers when a God goes inactive... uh, what happens when there's no-one left to raise shrine powers in the order? In a guild, you trans the skills and are limited only by lessons you put in/whatever other mechanical limitations there are to the skills. In an order, you need to have someone with the ability to 1. Raise shrines and 2. activate shrine powers. For instance, if you're just about to join an order with a dormant Divine, you're going to have to ask several questions that would affect your decision if you're interested in min-maxing your buffs/resists - for instance... is there someone around who can promote, do we keep active shrines up in places, and does the person promoting have enough standing to promote to a point where I can activate the shrines, too? And even then... you're still stuck without true favours from your Divine. To me, this is potentially a mechanical limitation that will see Divine with dormant orders slowly leeching any combat-oriented members until the point where there's no-one left to defend Godrealms/shrines/etc.
The difference with guild min/maxing is that you have a choice in the guild and you can check what skills the guild gets and be aware that say... a mage isn't going to be as much of a walking tank as a warrior is. There's also the godfeelings part. If Divine 1 doesn't look benevolently on Divine 2 and Divine 2 is dormant, you're kind of stuck with choosing Divine 1 especially as said order will likely have more shrines and members plus individuals to raise them so when shrine powers are raised, good luck with getting the benefits from them. Anyway, I don't see the point in arguing further about this. Things are as they are... and until there is a way for everyone to gain the benefits of these 'universal' buffs, it would probably be best to not have them be the only way to gain the most out of your defenses.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
1
Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
Order choice is 100% RP based. There aren't mechanical differences between orders - all of them use exactly the same mechanics. The only differences are from "Are you a member of an order Y/N?" and "Is your God active Y/N?"
Providing methods to get Order benefits while in an order with an inactive God or no order at all means that you're that much more free to choose the Order you like based on RP rather than on who will give you more truefavours. That's a good thing, in the same way your guild skills not turning off if your GM goes inactive is a good thing.
Guild choice is RP based. Trying to seperate the two into types of RP choice isn't feesible, you're drawing an imaginary line. You're basically just arbitrarily choosing what is a valid choice for RP purposes and what is not. "Because guilds have differences," doesn't validate guild choice RP and "because order powers are the same," doesn't invalidate order RP. You want to eliminate the benefits of orders because it's what you want, and I get it, but lets not portray it as some sort of concern for game fairness.
I mean, I get the desire, but it feels like you're making it up as you go. It's misleading to state orders give true favors. You can be in an order and offer to an active God. You can split offerings. I did it all the time. Order powers also don't "turn off," when your God goes inactive, so there is really no "turning off," of order powers and TFs.
edit: I would also point out that the premise of this argument, that Guild/Org defenses and "RP" are fundamentally different from Order privs and "RP" because Order privs are the same for all Orders is hooey. This conversation would still exist, if not substantiallymore dramatic, if Orders had all different powers.
Dunno, to me the choice of a guild was purely mechanical. "Does the guild have a skill that allows melding?" Is the question I ask when I choose what to join. As to there being no "turning off" of order powers when a God goes inactive... uh, what happens when there's no-one left to raise shrine powers in the order? In a guild, you trans the skills and are limited only by lessons you put in/whatever other mechanical limitations there are to the skills. In an order, you need to have someone with the ability to 1. Raise shrines and 2. activate shrine powers. For instance, if you're just about to join an order with a dormant Divine, you're going to have to ask several questions that would affect your decision if you're interested in min-maxing your buffs/resists - for instance... is there someone around who can promote, do we keep active shrines up in places, and does the person promoting have enough standing to promote to a point where I can activate the shrines, too? And even then... you're still stuck without true favours from your Divine. To me, this is potentially a mechanical limitation that will see Divine with dormant orders slowly leeching any combat-oriented members until the point where there's no-one left to defend Godrealms/shrines/etc.
The difference with guild min/maxing is that you have a choice in the guild and you can check what skills the guild gets and be aware that say... a mage isn't going to be as much of a walking tank as a warrior is. There's also the godfeelings part. If Divine 1 doesn't look benevolently on Divine 2 and Divine 2 is dormant, you're kind of stuck with choosing Divine 1 especially as said order will likely have more shrines and members plus individuals to raise them so when shrine powers are raised, good luck with getting the benefits from them. Anyway, I don't see the point in arguing further about this. Things are as they are... and until there is a way for everyone to gain the benefits of these 'universal' buffs, it would probably be best to not have them be the only way to gain the most out of your defenses.
You're missing the point. If your intent is min/maxing, there are questions you'd ask before joining a guild. "Does this guild get universal DMP?" The argument is being made that that type of question is valid "RP" for a guild, but is "forcing RP" in reference to Orders. This is not Order specific by any stretch, these RP choices are pretty much universal. Order's are just being singled out for really arbitrary reasons, and I just want it to be clear that the arguments against Order buffs are inconsistent with the argument for guild buffs. The difference being personal preference, which is a valid argument, but it needs to be state clearly that it's about personal preference.
edit: Ultimately getting into the "what if X happens in Y scenario," is going too far down the rabbit hole. This game is designed around belonging to things. It's why rogues are completely crippled, but still allowed. Is it "forcing RP" for people to be crippled as rogues? Of course not, that argument has never been made. It's a fundamental aspect of the game. It is very easily argued that orders, as an extension of the orginal design, are in the same boat.
What part of 'shrines won't be the only way to get to 10' are you guys not understanding?
If you're in an Order and have access to Order powers, those powers should be useful. Why is that bad? What's wrong with that? Sure, maybe a tanky SD will be at 10 in poison resist, but they likely won't be in divinus/excoro resist. Then they activate shrine power, or have a TF and get a little more boost for that type. TF's are already going to be taking a huge nerf by being integrated into the buff/resist system rather than just being a straight 15% reduction of damage (or 20, whatever it is). If you want to choose not to be in an Order, or don't want to worry about TF's, then feel free, that's your choice. Taking an extra bit of damage (5-10% or so) isn't that much, it's an extra 50-100 damage on 1000 damage hit. You guys are blowing this out of proportion, massively.
Guild skills should generally fall into the 1/8 category (the ones that typically give 10 dmp) but ones that are more/less effective will be fine tuned to retain their relative usefulness (ie: Nightkiss being 3/10, Draconis being 2/9). The general feel of the guild should at this juncture, stay intact, and adjustments can be made as we go down the road.
Edit: @Elanorwen - wanting a melding guild can also be considered an RP choice - you like guilds where you can mold the land to your liking blahblah.
Note that a 1/10 skill, if the person has no access to 1/7, 1/8, or 1/9 skills, will never get them to the cap now. It simply means that it will always provide a benefit unless you are at the cap.
Besides this talk about resistances stemming from TrueFavours and shrines (which I agree with @Synkarin and @Xenthos for), I didn't know that the progression through the caps necessitated having skills at each level of a given type to get to the next.
I was led to believe that three skills going 1/6 blunt, 2/6 blunt, 3/6 blunt would end up with the user at 6/6 blunt. Unless I'm misunderstanding the above statement then, unless you get a 1/1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 or 1/5 in there for blunt or universal (yes, low numbers, just examples), you're not getting to 6/6. Is this the case or am I mistaken?
EDIT: This little algorithm should (unless I misunderstood things) give you your resistance:
1) Sort the defs according to their caps, with the lowest cap coming first. 2a) Add the strength of the def to your current resistance. 2b) If your current resistance is greater than the cap of the def, then the resistance is set to the cap of the def. Repeat 2 until you are out of defs.
Note that a 1/10 skill, if the person has no access to 1/7, 1/8, or 1/9 skills, will never get them to the cap now. It simply means that it will always provide a benefit unless you are at the cap.
Besides this talk about resistances stemming from TrueFavours and shrines (which I agree with @Synkarin and @Xenthos for), I didn't know that the progression through the caps necessitated having skills at each level of a given type to get to the next.
I was led to believe that three skills going 1/6 blunt, 2/6 blunt, 3/6 blunt would end up with the user at 6/6 blunt. Unless I'm misunderstanding the above statement then, unless you get a 1/1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 or 1/5 in there for blunt or universal (yes, low numbers, just examples), you're not getting to 6/6. Is this the case or am I mistaken?
While true, if you max out at 8/8 and then get two add-ons, one being 1/4 and the other being 1/10, you're left stuck at 9/10, not 10/10 as an effective boost (left side) can't go above its own effective max (right side)
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
There's something to point out that well established players are having trouble wrapping their heads around the system. We should take some time to rephrase the whole thing cause this is just gonna seem daunting to the casuals.
As cool as it would be to be able to control Gods and make them log on / favour people / interact with us, I'm pretty sure that's outside my authorized task.
That said, I feel like the Wheel was originally intended to be a way of allowing people to get favours somewhat "as needed" without Divine input. However, the fact that coin generation got nerfed so hard (being unable to convert curios into coins) has made that much less feasible.
Well, that's the point. You can basically always determine which guild skills you have, it's based entirely on things within player control. You cannot control the availability of true favors. It's entirely possible for you to have no source of truefavours at no reasonable fault of your own. There was a long time in Serenwilde history where there were no truely active orders, and when there was a god briefly inhabiting one of the roles (and interacting openly with the org) there were few to no truefavors given out - regardless of contributions. I contributed several million essence (4-ish?) over the course of two days and got nary a favor, much less a truefavor. It's just false that if you don't have a TF it's because you 'choose not to participate' or are somehow lazy.
Therefore, it makes total sense to curtail their usefulness, something that this buff system is inherently doing by integrating the bonus into standard defs. It may be (as pointed out) that this is a sufficient and no further change is needed, but that doesn't make the other side of the argument incorrect. The kind of metagaming calculation of which god is going to give you better mechanical benefits through truefavors and shrines is a bad thing. Were I a god, I would not want folks to RP with me based on expectations about my mechanical boosts.
You guys are right, lets just eliminate any kind of mechanical bonuses associated with being in an Order because it's just not fair to everyone.
While we're at it, lets eliminate any kind of bonuses outside guildskills completely. No more quest blessings, constructs, domoths etc. It's just not fair to everyone that only certain people get to take advantage of it while others are left floundering and unable to participate or compete at a reasonable level because of it.
"'Cause the fighting don't stop till I walk in." -Synkarin's Lament.
0
Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
edited March 2015
edit: it's entirely possible to be removed from a guild through no reasonable fault of their own, too. Do we eliminate guild mechanics because we want to appeal to the exceptions to the rule and the minority? No, we don't, so why do we want Order's to then function that way?
We just keep repeating the double standard that some have for Order's vs guilds. People calculate their metagame in org and guild choice on a daily basis (I became an SD originally for sweet, sweet choke), GMs RP with people all the time that just want the mechanics of a guild. These are not bad things, they are simply how some choose to play the game.
What's really important is to avoid anecdotes about that one time that one org did that thing and implying it's the rule rather than exception. The framework is going to be really flat if we appeal to the exceptions and not the rules and the majority.
I personally believe that Orders and all things associated with them should retain whatever impact they have now. It's not hard to be a part of an Order (or not part of an Order) and endear yourself to (active) Gods at the same time (following the in-game philosophy of Roark, that you should manipulate and use the Elder Gods' power wherever you can, for those Elder haters out there), so truefavours should stay as they are. Shrine powers are another thing. They should remain rather minimal, as they already do - mainly because you -can't- solicit active shrine powers from an inactive player. I don't support them being able to raise you to /10, but /7 - /9 sounds more reasonable.
I don't really think you can logically argue that a 3% boost (based on the 30%, non-artifact scale Estarra posted, converted to 10 tiers instead of 5) is really that maximal of a buff that it needs to be capped off earlier than the 10 tier.
Why is allowing shrine powers to always add an extra 3% unless you're already capped at 10 a big deal and too strong? even 6% addition?
It just doesn't make sense that things like shrine powers, TF's, Life domoth, HC, Quest blessings, constructs wouldn't be in the 'always useful unless you're at the 10 cap' category. I'm not saying they should boost you to 10 each time, I'm saying they should add 1-2 levels capping at 10.
The only argument against it seems to be 'I don't want to join an order, or my order isn't active enough for me to get these bonuses'
EDIT: This little algorithm should (unless I misunderstood things) give you your resistance:
1) Sort the defs according to their caps, with the lowest cap coming first. 2a) Add the strength of the def to your current resistance. 2b) If your current resistance is greater than the cap of the def, then the resistance is set to the cap of the def. Repeat 2 until you are out of defs.
Note that a 1/10 skill, if the person has no access to 1/7, 1/8, or 1/9 skills, will never get them to the cap now. It simply means that it will always provide a benefit unless you are at the cap.
Besides this talk about resistances stemming from TrueFavours and shrines (which I agree with @Synkarin and @Xenthos for), I didn't know that the progression through the caps necessitated having skills at each level of a given type to get to the next.
I was led to believe that three skills going 1/6 blunt, 2/6 blunt, 3/6 blunt would end up with the user at 6/6 blunt. Unless I'm misunderstanding the above statement then, unless you get a 1/1, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 or 1/5 in there for blunt or universal (yes, low numbers, just examples), you're not getting to 6/6. Is this the case or am I mistaken?
While true, if you max out at 8/8 and then get two add-ons, one being 1/4 and the other being 1/10, you're left stuck at 9/10, not 10/10 as an effective boost (left side) can't go above its own effective max (right side)
These two quotations contradict each other. One maintains that if your current def (regardless of the caps of the skills that were combined for that current def) is at or greater than your highest cap'd def, you'll hit that highest cap. The second notes that you won't hit your highest cap if you do not have skills that meet the prerequisite caps first, even if your current def total is at or greater than your cap.
Like @Shuyin said, it would very much be appreciated if a more consistent explanation of this mechanic could be provided - especially for the casual fighters to grasp, as this is the baseline intent of the Overhaul.
If you've got 8/8, and then add a 1/4 and a 1/10, do the following:
1) Sort them according to their caps. The defs will then become 1/4, 8/8 and 1/10 (the fact that the middle one is a combination of other defs doesn't matter in this scenario). 2) Take the smaller one first; 1/4. You now have that resistance. 3) Take the next one. You now have 9/8, which of course can't be had. So you get 8/8 again (so in essence, the 1/4 didn't have any effect at all). 4) Next one, the 1/10. Add it to the 8/8, and you get 9/10.
It needs to be capped off earlier than /10 because otherwise you've taken a walk in the park amount of essence in shrine powers and given yourself UNLIMITED POWER [/palpatine]
Or, the room to grow there at least. Now you have your hardcap, all you have to do is fill it in with all the easy-to-find buffs around, from quests to guildskills to universals. That doesn't seem right to me.
What I'm saying is, the /10 cap should be there. But it shouldn't be found in shrine powers, not even big ones like Armour.
I believe the explanation given was... strongest max cap is always applied last. I found that confusing personally so I went with... a skill cannot raise your effective buff (left side) to above what the skill's cap (right side) is. So say you have a 1/4, a 2/4 and a 1/6 skill active. Your effective defenses would be at 4/6. Adding another 1/4 skill would boost you up to 5/6 because then you have a 1/4, a 1/4, a 2/4 and a 1/6, but if you went and added say a 2/4 to the aforementioned stack, your defenses will still go up to only 5/6 because you already have a 3/4 boost active.
I guess going by application is always strongest last would also make sense because in the aforementioned example, it goes like: 1/4, 2/4, 2/4, 1/6, so the addition goes like so: 1/4, 3/4, 4/4, 5/6 Depends on what makes sense to people... and different people will likely need different ways of explaining how it goes as it is not the intuitive setup, which would be raising the buffs to 6/6 in the aforementioned example as the strongest cap is applied first rather than last.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
0
Cyndarinused Flamethrower! It was super effective.
It's pretty straight forward to me.
If the example is x/y, and you have 4 defs, the highest Y of the 4 is the effective highest obtainable level you can achieve.
The only slightly confusing part is that X isn't just a sum total of all of your defs. The number of defs within the same tier cannot exceed the Y, the level of the tier. So you can't have more than 5 x/5 defs or 3 x/3 defs.
Comments
That said, I feel like the Wheel was originally intended to be a way of allowing people to get favours somewhat "as needed" without Divine input. However, the fact that coin generation got nerfed so hard (being unable to convert curios into coins) has made that much less feasible.
?
Wondering how guilds are going to look and all this talk about general stuff kinda seems to lose context (to me at least) when I can't see how it would affect me nor how different guilds would shape up.
Like, i'd like to see what my "maxed out" potential would, in theory, be as well as the average for my classes.
It seems like right now I could get to 7 or 9 universal with what appears to be considered "generally" available stuff, I just need to join Lisaera's order and have a shrine war.
On the flipside, if I'm not in an order, or I choose to remain in Hoaracle's order for rp reasons without shrine powers or regular favours, that goes down to 4... (maybe 5 if I offer to Lisaera consistently)
It just doesn't make any sense to say being in X guild with Y benefit is fine because it's Lusternia's uniqueness/diversity/interest. But to say the same about orders is "bad RP," "unfair," etc. This game, from the get go, has always mechanically encouraged everyone to be apart of things. Orgs, guilds, orders, etc. To now draw the line at orders is really inconsistent with how the rest of the game is built.
I don't have a problem with it. I think that's exactly how Lusternia is designed to function.
Providing methods to get Order benefits while in an order with an inactive God or no order at all means that you're that much more free to choose the Order you like based on RP rather than on who will give you more truefavours. That's a good thing, in the same way your guild skills not turning off if your GM goes inactive is a good thing.
Guild choice is RP based. Trying to seperate the two into types of RP choice isn't feesible, you're drawing an imaginary line. You're basically just arbitrarily choosing what is a valid choice for RP purposes and what is not. "Because guilds have differences," doesn't validate guild choice RP and "because order powers are the same," doesn't invalidate order RP. You want to eliminate the benefits of orders because it's what you want, and I get it, but lets not portray it as some sort of concern for game fairness.
The difference with guild min/maxing is that you have a choice in the guild and you can check what skills the guild gets and be aware that say... a mage isn't going to be as much of a walking tank as a warrior is. There's also the godfeelings part. If Divine 1 doesn't look benevolently on Divine 2 and Divine 2 is dormant, you're kind of stuck with choosing Divine 1 especially as said order will likely have more shrines and members plus individuals to raise them so when shrine powers are raised, good luck with getting the benefits from them. Anyway, I don't see the point in arguing further about this. Things are as they are... and until there is a way for everyone to gain the benefits of these 'universal' buffs, it would probably be best to not have them be the only way to gain the most out of your defenses.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
EDIT: This little algorithm should (unless I misunderstood things) give you your resistance:
1) Sort the defs according to their caps, with the lowest cap coming first.
2a) Add the strength of the def to your current resistance.
2b) If your current resistance is greater than the cap of the def, then the resistance is set to the cap of the def.
Repeat 2 until you are out of defs.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
If you've got 8/8, and then add a 1/4 and a 1/10, do the following:
1) Sort them according to their caps. The defs will then become 1/4, 8/8 and 1/10 (the fact that the middle one is a combination of other defs doesn't matter in this scenario).
2) Take the smaller one first; 1/4. You now have that resistance.
3) Take the next one. You now have 9/8, which of course can't be had. So you get 8/8 again (so in essence, the 1/4 didn't have any effect at all).
4) Next one, the 1/10. Add it to the 8/8, and you get 9/10.
Or, the room to grow there at least. Now you have your hardcap, all you have to do is fill it in with all the easy-to-find buffs around, from quests to guildskills to universals. That doesn't seem right to me.
What I'm saying is, the /10 cap should be there. But it shouldn't be found in shrine powers, not even big ones like Armour.
I guess going by application is always strongest last would also make sense because in the aforementioned example, it goes like:
1/4, 2/4, 2/4, 1/6, so the addition goes like so: 1/4, 3/4, 4/4, 5/6 Depends on what makes sense to people... and different people will likely need different ways of explaining how it goes as it is not the intuitive setup, which would be raising the buffs to 6/6 in the aforementioned example as the strongest cap is applied first rather than last.
Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.