takamagahara | MAY Activity Check + HMD

Welcome to another Activity Check + HMD!

The AC will run from May 26 through ~~June 1 ending at MIDNIGHT EST. If that's confusing for you, just look here.~~ **Extended to June 2nd at Midnight EST

In order to pass AC, you will have to provide TWO proofs of your activity. What counts as a proof of activity? Simple! Any one or more network threads consisting of ten (10) or more comments from your character OR one or more log threads consisting of five (5) or more comments from your character. To make AC easier for you, we've created a nice little flowchart for you to follow. Remember, comments must be from May in order to count. That means anything from May 1st through May 31st will count towards AC.

There is now an additional requirement to passing AC!

Everyone is sent an approval email when their application is approved! We now require you do ALL of the following items from your approval email as part of your first month's AC with a new character.

1) Reply to the mod approval e-mail with the username that you will be using

2) Request to join these communities: thenearshore, thefarshore, takamagahara

New characters will not be granted access to the comms without having completed step #1

3) Fill out these forms and post them on your journal: permissions, god/shinki info

4) Make an inbox for your character and post it to your journal

5) Your application is posted on your journal as well

6) Reply to the Taken Character and God/Shinki Info pages, as well as the Tag Request post

Please copy the appropriate code, fill out the necessary information, and paste it in a reply to this post.

○ For Characters Accepted In May:

○ For All Other Characters:

This month will also have our mandatory bi-monthly HMD.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I think anon has raised some good points about IC reasoning. However, I'm against placing that above player choice. I feel that OOC reasoning and player choice should come first, even if it means that there are players who app gods without shinki. There are players who have tried their luck with RNG in this game and others and it just didn't work out for them for whatever reason OOCly and those reasons should take precedence.

At most, I think the mods should mention that shinki shortage is an ongoing problem on the app page and incoming players need to take that into account when they choose their character's role. And possibly encourage players on both sides to work something out with someone who doesn't have already have a partner.

Another option that could potentially work is setting up a 'workshop' post during the reserve/TDM period where prospective appers can have a chance to discuss what they're doing/hoping to do. Something kind of like the CR meme does for people who are already in game but for people who aren't in it yet.

At any rate, I think this is a problem that's best solved through interaction between players, with or without mediation by the mod team.

I'm gonna throw a couple 2c in here too because awhile back there was actually a really good discussion about the shinki drought and god/shinki matchups and I totally said I'd summarize the main points and post them on the suggestions/mod HMD and then I... completely forgot about it 8V but now I'm reminded and I'm glad because this is a big part of the game!

While multiple shinki being assigned to the same god is definitely a contributing factor to the shinki drought (I'm totally calling it this now), this isn't always a simple case of a god character hoarding shinki from their OOC friends or w/e. RNG matches can make for fun surprise CR, but it doesn't always work out. Players might drop for any number of reasons, and that often leaves behind a god or shinki that's now without a partner. Newer characters are the highest risk for this, unfortunately, so allowing your character to be paired by RNG can lead to dead ends and a lot of reshuffling. This is something that affects both gods and shinki. It's not something that only affects god characters even if it might seem that way from an outside perspective.

If a shinki character is reshuffled repeatedly, it can be difficult for that character to adjust and the player might chose to pair them with one of their established CR instead. If they know the player is committed to the game, they know they won't have to deal with another quick reshuffling. God characters can do this too by having their characters pick up Nora shinki! The Nora system exists so that gods can basically share shinki and still have that strong emotional connection with them, but I feel like this doesn't get used nearly as much. Whether it's because shinki characters don't want to Nora or god characters want a shinki all to themselves, I can't really say, but I think the game would benefit greatly from a stronger push to encourage Nora-ing ICly and more shinki characters in general over limiting how many shinki each god can take on.

For example: there could be special shinki-only missions from NPC gods requesting a character to Nora for them for some specific reason. This is something that definitely goes on in Noragami, so maybe the PCs have been around long enough for some of the Nora-friendly native gods to finally start warming up to the idea of working together? Being Nora'd to a native god even temporarily could give special rewards or favours that wouldn't be obtainable any other way, at the cost of possibly being shunned by less Nora-friendly natives. Or perhaps in future events there may be enemy shinki who can use the bind spell on PCs, so shinki with multiple names from being Nora'd would have an advantage from the onset. Stuff like that!

All that said, I do actually like the idea of putting a bit of a limit on how many shinki each god can have based on their follower count. It fits the lore and it would encourage more activity from players if they wanted to pair up with lots of shinki friends. Something like 3 PC shinki maximum and then +1 for each 10k followers should be plenty. I don't know if I'd want to put a hard cap on it though, personally, for the reasons stated above (and if you have enough followers to take on like 12 shinki you're probably active enough to tend to all that CR tbh). Maybe Nora characters would be excluded from the count so that going Nora would be even more beneficial on an OOC level? Sharing is caring and all that.

A workshop post also sounds like it might be fun! Sometimes you might end up with a pairing that doesn't work out, so meeting with other new players to discuss possible CR for matchups would be awesome. Toplevels on the meme could be limited to just shinkiless gods/godless shinki and people who are apping/thinking of apping, since they're the ones that need it the most. I think it'd be worth trying, at least once!

You summed up the problems I have with relying on RNG really well! Sometimes fun surprise matchups result and it's great when it works out. I've played both a god and a shinki here and honestly? I've found it easier to app and establish a shinki when I know where they'll be going and can plan ahead a little.

I like the idea of basing the shinki number on follower count though I think that starting number is a little high. Personally, I think a brand new god should only be allowed to have one shinki until they establish themselves given that they also gain a residence of their own and that's a pretty big advantage all on its own. I agree that the nora system isn't utilized enough and I'd also like to add that the god/shinki partnership, while important, isn't the only partnership characters can build in game. Gods and shinki ally with each other, too, and I think this is something that could be encouraged a lot more.

In my experience, the loss of a partner is harder to recover from when playing a shinki than it is a god, mostly because shinki are inescapably dependent on their gods. When a god drops, whatever development plans you had wind up derailed because the shinki winds up uprooted. Basically, there's an uneven logistics issue when it comes to character development and I think it's contributing to the shinki drought, too. Players need more OOC incentives to app and play shinki here which I believe is an issue that's been raised before. While shinki have intriguing IC elements to them, the OOC logistics issues saps a lot of appeal they have. As others have stated before on HMDs, the role of shinki in general need further expansion in game to make them just as appealing as gods and there are ways of doing this without rewriting what shinki are by giving them more development options from a meta perspective. Shinki-only missions, missions tailored to different types of shinki, etc, might be a good place to start.

RE: the starting shinki numbers I gave, I mostly just picked a random number at 3am... still, I do think 1 is a bit low. At the end of the day we're here to have fun, and for some people that's being able to app in with their friends and play out the god/shinki dynamic. 1 shinki per person feels a bit too limiting to start with. It can take awhile to build up a follower count if you're not insanely active, I've been here with Add 2 years now and he's still only at like 25k with no strikes on my record and maybe 1 hiatus tops.

Maybe 2 shinki would be a better starting point? That leaves enough wiggle room to bring in two friends or get an RNG match and enable a friend later, or get an RNG match and take on a friend's godless shinki at a later point. The rest is taken care of through activity or sharing a Nora.

+1 to everything stated, though! I only have a god right now myself but I'd love to see more focus on shinki characters in general. Please give those shinki some more love!!

MAY Activity Check + HMD

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