Shattered Kingdoms

I'm curious what percentage of players do not join a religion.
Would it be worth considering, to have an additional perk for members of each faith? You go to a shrine and get some sort of perk?
A sargasian can go to a shrine and poke symbol to get the faith spell for a given amount of time?
This idea doesn't have to be the exact faith spell. Because some spells don't work like that. But something like this would encourage more people to join faiths, making them a bigger part of the game.

There is at least one mechanical perk for not joining a faith.
There is a character class that can not join a religion.
People wanting to join religions has never really been the problem.
Priests who are active enough (and willing enough) to take on a high follower role are, in relation to the total number of religions the realms has been.

Trosis' idea of a symbol as a permanent fixture in a temple is interesting.
Perhaps in absence of a high priest, there'd be a specific temple for each faith to go and pray and get the temporary affects of their religion prayer.

I don't as much like the use of loyalty points for investment unless it is pretty steep and there is no active high follower.
With prays being logged, staff will always be alerted now to seekers and get it taken care of quickly as they are able; there is good RP potential there, and with other members of the church that could be happening.
Perhaps spending tokens for investment is something that can only be spendable after a 2 week period from character creation. You can literally be offering your loyalty

I made a post not that long ago discussing the idea of there being a single higher flagged priest of light and dark religions who could create a symbol on someone else of their aura by targeting them. The idea also touched on while leaving religions as they are creating a focus point between light and dark as far as conflict to help deal with the dilution of priests between 16 religions and 32 high follower and second positions. Of which only 16 where at the time filled. Considering the attempts to focus the player base to create more interaction in the newbie school. I thought it was a similar way of focusing players in religion without out losing much of the individuality of each (unlike what happened with the newbie school). I was told in that thread that other solutions where being looking into. Of which I am very curious what they are? I was also told that Imms are actively trying to interact with people of religions for investments and sometimes IC symbol request prayers.

As far as joining vs not joining a religion its spirit aura or protection. Assuming you do not need to make use of abuse able resurrections via but Im X religion.

(edit got the link to the post I mentioned viewtopic.php?f=25&t=25446)