I have serious reservations about the shinki assignation idea. While interesting in theory, I foresee two results from this:
1. Shinki from popular canons or who have connections with players will immediately get chosen. Shinki from obscure canons, from players entirely new to the game, or generally lacking in IC response will languish for a month. This would strongly discourage new players, who have a good chance of going a month without access to the fundamental premise of the game.
2. Gods who are inherently popular or already have numerous shinki will attract more shinki, because they will have more people speaking on their behalf. Their other shinki are very likely to encourage new people they meet to join their temple. Conversely, gods who have nothing but soulless shinki will only have themselves to recruit for them, and unpopular or abrasive gods (coughZettacough) will never attract a shinki ICly. The end result is that some gods will be effectively locked out of an IC shinki pairing, gods with many shinki will get more shinki, and players will be discourage from apping gods when they know they won't have any realistic chance about getting assigned a shinki.
Speaking personally? This idea would kneecap one of my prime reasons for apping Zetta into the game: getting a shinki whose bond to him would force him to moderate his behavior and grow as a character. And when I first apped Dust in... if I'd had to play out waiting for an entire OOC month to engage in something critical to the game, there's a very good chance I wouldn't have stayed. It's especially punishing to characters who are eager to engage ayakashi, because if they don't find a god, they are literally worse than useless for the entire period they have to wait for a random assignment.
I understand the motivation behind the suggestion and appreciate the goal of building stronger IC bonds to limit cases where a randomly-assigned shinki/god pair simply don't interact (because that's poison too), but that situation can occur even with voluntary matchmaking (as I can attest). I strongly believe this is a rich-get-richer proposal, where some characters will accrue far more CR and others will be utterly frozen out. To that end, I strongly oppose.
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1. Shinki from popular canons or who have connections with players will immediately get chosen. Shinki from obscure canons, from players entirely new to the game, or generally lacking in IC response will languish for a month. This would strongly discourage new players, who have a good chance of going a month without access to the fundamental premise of the game.
2. Gods who are inherently popular or already have numerous shinki will attract more shinki, because they will have more people speaking on their behalf. Their other shinki are very likely to encourage new people they meet to join their temple. Conversely, gods who have nothing but soulless shinki will only have themselves to recruit for them, and unpopular or abrasive gods (coughZettacough) will never attract a shinki ICly. The end result is that some gods will be effectively locked out of an IC shinki pairing, gods with many shinki will get more shinki, and players will be discourage from apping gods when they know they won't have any realistic chance about getting assigned a shinki.
Speaking personally? This idea would kneecap one of my prime reasons for apping Zetta into the game: getting a shinki whose bond to him would force him to moderate his behavior and grow as a character. And when I first apped Dust in... if I'd had to play out waiting for an entire OOC month to engage in something critical to the game, there's a very good chance I wouldn't have stayed. It's especially punishing to characters who are eager to engage ayakashi, because if they don't find a god, they are literally worse than useless for the entire period they have to wait for a random assignment.
I understand the motivation behind the suggestion and appreciate the goal of building stronger IC bonds to limit cases where a randomly-assigned shinki/god pair simply don't interact (because that's poison too), but that situation can occur even with voluntary matchmaking (as I can attest). I strongly believe this is a rich-get-richer proposal, where some characters will accrue far more CR and others will be utterly frozen out. To that end, I strongly oppose.