Invitation & Higher Tiers

[Mazerin]

As to avoid the clutter in the newbie channel. I have elected to use the forum to bring up the discussion of invitation system and higher tier characters.

It is known, that higher tier characters are evil, and are likely to be antagonists. One of the mechanics that represents that, is the invitation going up by rping with characters higher tier than you are. Unfortunately it seems like some people report the T3+ being unsustainable to rp with, as even one scene increases your invitation level and makes it hard to really hold any long-term story with the so-called corrupt characters.

My opinion on this is that T3+ are evil. While T3-T4 -might- get away with being anti-hero, it is no doubt that they’re corrupt. And that for the most part, they use others to further their own goals, there’s this whole theme of power = corruption, so to me. If you are friends with T3, I think your invitation level being high is not a bug but rather a result of the mechanics working as intended.

On the other hand however, I feel like maybe invitation gain is too fast? I hadn’t had much of the experience rping WITH T3s and even if I did meet some I never noticed much of a jump in invitation, could the good people of this community bring to light their own experiences with the invitation system? Would love to hear thoughts from T3+ folks as well.

[Ckaleb]

More or less agree with that. Using no examples, there were a lot of cases in H6 of people using high tiers strictly as a means of progression, like they were leveling a character, but not giving back to the grid? People who would isolate themselves on these incredibly mechanically strong characters but give no interaction, meaning whenever they actually engaged with anything happening on the grid you would end up less with story-beat villainy and more ‘I have come to combat/KO punch you into an anti-climax.’

That all leads into a tangent, so suffice to say the correction on higher tiers seems to be trying to remove that incentive to play a vastly more powerful character. The Wild Hunt takes them faster, it’s only 1 more focus point for a relatively high karmic cost, and they’re harder to be around (among other things).

Maybe in some edge cases there are points to be made, especially texts, for invitation increase to be diminished. But in general it’s important to consider both what it means for your character to not only be ‘evil,’ (tier 2s can also be evil, just not corrupted explicitly by the supernatural world- as stated in ‘help moral tier’) but someone who can never make the world better than they found it.

[Tenzin]

People mentioned exchanging 1 text with a T3 would raise invitation, but I’ve had a couple of phone calls with a T3 and never experienced any such increase. I also have roleplayed in the same room as one for up to 2 hours, but no increase. I feel that if your character roleplays with them regularly and has built a more personal relationship with them, that may be what boosts the rate of increase to be impossibly quick.

Another theory that came to mind is if it might not be that your invitation goes up by a compounding of interactions with a T3+, but instead if your character has fresh history with or a close/frequented relationship with one, then your base invitation level can just never go below a certain #.

To help counteract the rate of invitation gain, my character specifically tries to help others lower invitation level through RP or public events geared towards that. I’m just not sure how effective these active goals are versus him simply being a T1 in a room of T2s.

[Lykaia]

Playing as a T3 has proven to be a largely negative experience. Long-term roleplay and story development with others becomes nearly impossible. Even a private two-to-four-hour scene between just two characters can trigger a +1 increase. There are cases where a single text message exchange can result in an immediate increase. For example, rescuing a severely injured faction member over the course of forty minutes was enough to grant an invitation. While this could be argued as situationally appropriate, the game is designed to emphasize politics. Political maneuvering becomes impractical if nearly every interaction risks increasing invitation. Attempting to negotiate for Borough claims or coordinate actions, such as operations against the 63rd, often leads others to avoid contact entirely in order to protect their invitation.

Faction play suffers heavily under these mechanics. The Hand is effectively the only faction where a T3 is fully welcomed, especially natural T3. For the temple, the situation is restrictive: a soldier who has undergone Temple augmentation is classified as a demolisher without a chip, which prevents gaining standing, using half the order commands, or attaining rank. Other players may choose not to work with such characters at all. Efforts to plan missions, contribute to investigations, or sit at the planning table can trigger further invitation increases. This discourages collaboration, as other players are penalized for involvement. Even participating in larger group scenes is insufficient to balance the rate at which invitation accumulates. Once it rises past a point, players from righteous factions may go so far as to completely exclude T3s from play and it is absurd that the pro-supernatural faction is the only non-restricted place to be for a natural T3.

This environment severely limits opportunities for meaningful story progression and makes roleplay as a T3 feel unrewarding, as does interacting with them. If we interacted and you havn’t gained invitation, this is because I have not endeavored story effort on you.

[Ckaleb]

The Temple and The Order are righteous factions and don’t allow tier 3s to have authority, yes. They wouldn’t be moral if they did. And.. Really, people shouldn’t be motivated/obligated to join a faction, a society, and a cult all at the same time. People get really obvious how highly they prioritize the mechanics of the game over their characterization/real belief in their faction/society when they do this. And if you wanna go that route of characterization, of having no values or principles beyond your own self-interest and accumulation for favor and relics, then one must capitulate to the status quo of each faction they join, or otherwise mold their actions to it in pursuit of power, no?

So, as an alternative: None of the societies are righteous, in comparison. The Conclave, The Vigil, and to a lesser degree the Court all encourage characters in them to be immoral. In The Court, all tier 2s are capped at rank 6, as an example, meaning inevitably one must be tier 3 if they seek power in that society. The Iron Moon Lodge and The Sons of Olympia both have faction mechanics that encourage violence as well. One easy solution to this for any characters that want to spend time with a tier 3.. Is to become tier 3. The lure of corruption.

I think some things can be tuned back, but yeah. If you wanna RP with good people that want to remain good people, then it only makes sense to do so in moderation? Else, why play an antagonist? Why exactly SHOULDN’T being a horrible person not absolutely disrupt and destroy your social life with people, isolating you from those you care about as you mindlessly pursue power. The pursuit of power is designed to be a lonely one, and over time all you have are enemies as you grow further away… Or you can be redeemed. To be corrupted is to surround yourself with corruption and power. If you’ve stopped pursuing corruption and power, then the pursuit of humility in order to stay with those you love is a real, meaningful direction of character development.

I’d say, if any change could be made, would be to give lower tiers more incentive to be corrupted/receive invitation? Even the 63rd antagonists are relegated to some situational instances to get victims, as absurdly powerful as these new tools are, they’re actually easy to avoid. But maybe consent and opt-in strategies are more important to the health of the game in light of some of horror stories Haven’s had to deal with in the past, especially with problematic players.

To ask, in response to T3 feeling unrewarding, what is the ‘reward’ we are looking for?

[Ckaleb]

Correction to the above, The Conclave*, not the Court, all tier 2s are capped at rank 2.

[Lykaia]

Faction membership is highly incentivized, as each faction offers a specific and significant reward to its members. The difference in strength between a T3 and a T2 is minimal, amounting to a slow +10 in a discipline, something any character with two combat foci can offset which. The first three foci are affordable before tiering up, so a T3 is only marginally stronger than a T2. Relics, which are relatively easy to steal, make the difference even less meaningful. In practical terms, two well-played T2s can defeat a T3 with little difficulty. The notion of T3 characters being substantially more powerful does not hold up mechanically.

T3s are expected to generate story and increase the sense of danger in the world. However, this expectation cannot be fulfilled if their presence forces constant combat in a setting intended to emphasize political play. Roleplay rewards are derived from story development, but meaningful storylines cannot emerge if other players consistently avoid T3s due to the excessive costs of interaction.

Adjusting the rate at which characters gain invitation based on their Tier could help balance progression. However, a similar issue existed in H6, where stronger characters were actually easier to maintain. In practice, there was no increased need to feed, and this imbalance likely carried over into the current iteration’s acedia system as well.

[Ckaleb]

Not incentivizing enough that it should matter? Having illusion Mancy at 1 is not drastically changing how I play. Having Soldiering from Temple wouldn’t either. It’s horizontal progression. Good, nice to have! But if I weren’t in the Order or better yet, had never gained the Award, it wouldn’t matter. Horses are 15% cheaper, cars are 15% more expensive. Melee damage is increased by 5%. These perks and abilities are meant to synergize and develop a roster of characters that are MORE their faction than they are not. So, you’ll see a lot of Order characters involved with horses, tooth and claw, slightly combative, etcetera because these mechanics encourage characters to act more in line with the future The Order wants to create.

They ‘highly’ incentivize you to homogenize with the faction you do join, as they also come with debuffs. These bonuses are not so strong that you’re going to overcome someone who isn’t making use of these systems at a relatively similar tier, especially as people start using the RP fight system more than the combat system. It’s min-maxing. I don’t think there’s something wrong with joining a faction, a society, and a cult, but Fear of Missing Out would be misplaced and unwarranted (often at the expense of your characterization, wherein you become a character with no values or principles tied to their organizations [This sort of a broader complaint to the community, tangential to the subject, forgive me]).

I do agree that T3s and really all of the higher archetypes aren’t nearly as strong as they were. Given their cost, they’ve been superseded by guest characters and monsters to fill the role of antag from what I can discern. I think I would like to see some encouragement/tools given to higher tiers in order to allow them to antagonize other players, so, I think what I’d like to do is offer Nova solutions depending what his goal might be? As it seems hard to discern what the goal is at the moment with the way systems are working.

If the goal is to make higher tiers get up off their butts and antag, I’d suggest returning them their focus points/giving them other tools in order to facilitate their evil ways. I think the idea here was that the more time you spend with players, the more invited to you they are, and the more you’re able to do/change them in order to fit your evil schemes, but in practice this also allows other players to course-correct your victims and step in.. And a tier 3 will never be able to make up for a bad night from a gank squad. They have to sleep, regardless of how powerful they are.

If the goal is to make higher tiers less significantly powerful, more social characters and have really eventful antag replaced mostly by guests and monsters, I’d say invitation levels should be adjusted in order to fit this nuance (And also communicated so that people playing these characters can adjust accordingly). There might be better changes for this, that other people can suggest as well.

[Lykaia]

T3 humans currently find greater acceptance and utility within the Hand than within the Temple, despite the Temple being the faction explicitly responsible for augmenting soldiers into being powerful.

[Ckaleb]

Sounds like a character for the Hand, or even the Vigil? Are you referring to ‘Scientifically Augmented,’ the positive modifier that was changed from ‘Temple Augmented’ to be broader and less faction specific, and edited recently in the help files to account for this? Being righteous and moral is the defining feature (of few) that separates the Temple from The Vigil and shouldn’t be changed.

[Lykaia]

The helpfile remains unchanged from its version on the old website. While general usage may have been expanded, the lore context continues to identify it as a Temple invention. The automoderation system currently prevents linking directly to the archived site.

[Lykaia]

Ckaleb
Participant
July 12, 2025 at 9:40 pm

I’ve been ruthlessly removing myself from the room when tier 3s are around, and am probably one of the most active players on the grid. I don’t do Fabled quests either. Truly, there’s something missing in the feedback with the system.

This provides sufficient reason to cease replying.

[Matias]

I personally think that T3s being treated as a significant tier is a little silly since the ability to buy foci for T2.

If T3s could access legendaries or there were more things locked to T3 than maybe there would be a mechanical justification.

Right now there is only a narrative/theme justification and we do not know if T3s give invitations faster/slower/same as T4 or T5s.

If it is slower than it would indicate truly higher tiers might be nigh unplayable without actually antaging people by FORCING RP onto them due to everyone protecting their invitation.

I would personally say every 12 hours of RP between yourself and a T3 should result in invitation raising. You can count minimum interaction at 15 minutes so any emote or text without follow up still has progress to the advancing of invitation.

[Mazerin]

Hey so, correct me on this if I’m wrong, isn’t antag RP just… Forcing it on people regardless? I mean, it depends on what you mean by forcing, but like. If I pull up to your workplace, delete the kneecaps of your co-worker (NPC) and threaten you for trying to distrupt my plans unwittingly. That’d be forceful RP.

So is taking blood from victimization, biting, etc. All of that isn’t quite ‘consenual’. My point that I’m trying to make is that antag RP will be forced in one way or another, the difference is whether the victim is looking for that kind of RP, if no they can always just go through pathway of being a difficult prisoner, give all the LF/goodies right away and one can be on their way.

From what people are writing here it almost seems like everyone has their own idea of what a T3+ character is supposed to be. Though I’ll admit it does feel like the corrupt characters have been weakened severely mechanically, as far as combat is concerned, but they do get a ton of other improvements, like better appearance score, social rank gain increase, wealth tier cap, you name it.

[Lykaia]

Acedia is designed to encourage antagonism; this serves as its driving force and is the basis on which others earn invitation. Stat tier caps were already a component of the system in H6, and H7 provides more methods to significantly mitigate them.

An example from H6 illustrates the above: one character pursued the approach described above, isolating themselves with no allies and generating widespread hostility by forcing interactions into others’ roleplay. The situation ultimately ended with the character’s death. No one liked this character. This reflects the intended purpose of guests, particularly monster guests more. Standard characters, by contrast, are meant to function as roleplay participants within the world instead. If a character is alienated and no one engages with them, they are no longer contributing to roleplay in any meaningful way.

[Author]

Posts