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too good to live

Rods out for Pakellas.

What's wrong with Pakellas?

The way he was dragging that +72 giant club through the water... it really looked like he was going to descend into the Dungeon of Zot and try to take the Orb. My sympathies to the zoo worker who had to zap him. I think the zapping was totally justified given the circumstances. No matter how our sentiments appeal to our rational minds: the life of an Orb is more important than the lives of a thousand Pakellases.

Oh, didn't see the branch tracker:

Disable Pakellas
The god's design currently doesn't really function - it's very narrowly focused
in a way that's not very interesting and also causes balance problems.
Turning things like heal wounds/enslavement/teleport into near-unlimited
resources (where the latter two of those have been deliberately changed from
having infinite spell sources to being finite in the past) in particular isn't
great. In general, having a god who runs entirely off evocations skill and
makes all those items stronger seems likely to cause problems - it's desirable
for evocations skill to be a reasonable investment without the god, so a god
just focusing on evocations ends up making that one skill doubly effective.

Currently Pakellas is disabled pending a rework (or full removal), so
characters currently worshipping Pakellas can still continue as normal.

I has a sad.

Stupid lack of ongett... he'd know exactly what to say in this situation...

I think the full-on removal of a god is an excellent thing because it makes a good precedent for the removal of other awful gods.

The faster Pakellas meets the chopping block, the better.

Croases wrote:I think the full-on removal of a god is an excellent thing because it makes a good precedent for the removal of other awful gods.

The faster Pakellas meets the chopping block, the better.

This.
I fucking hope this creates a gold precedent to axe the pantheon.

trog's altar is red
sif muna is blue
pakellas is dead
nemelex is poo

In general, having a god who runs entirely off evocations skill and
makes all those items stronger seems likely to cause problems - it's desirable
for evocations skill to be a reasonable investment without the god, so a god
just focusing on evocations ends up making that one skill doubly effective.

While I agree that Pakellas needs rework, I disagree with this part of the rationale used. It would be perfectly fine to have a god that made evokables somewhat stronger, and also gave more (but not unlimited) usable charges to evokables.

https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/view.php?id=10511

In case anyone wants to fiddle around with an alternate interpretation

When will the first Tupac reference be dropped in this thread (this one doesn't count)?

Rast wrote:
In general, having a god who runs entirely off evocations skill and
makes all those items stronger seems likely to cause problems - it's desirable
for evocations skill to be a reasonable investment without the god, so a god
just focusing on evocations ends up making that one skill doubly effective.

While I agree that Pakellas needs rework, I disagree with this part of the rationale used. It would be perfectly fine to have a god that made evokables somewhat stronger, and also gave more (but not unlimited) usable charges to evokables.

I mean if the rationale is "a player who is investing in evo anyways can get all the god benefits for free at no xp cost" then you might as well axe trog, and partially makh/oka who are both still good with low investment in invo.

Structure, logic, function, control. A structure cannot stand without a foundation. Logic is the foundation of a function. Function is the essence of control. -Ensign Tuvok

Anyways; *shrug* Pakellas was fairly weak anyways; better than Trog, but that's not saying much. (Note: I played a FeAr of Pakellas).

bcadren wrote:Pakellas was fairly weak anyways; better than Trog

does not compute

Siegurt wrote:https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/view.php?id=10511

In case anyone wants to fiddle around with an alternate interpretation

shit, i totally forgot about this patch. oops...

PleasingFungus wrote:
Siegurt wrote:https://crawl.develz.org/mantis/view.php?id=10511

In case anyone wants to fiddle around with an alternate interpretation

shit, i totally forgot about this patch. oops...

Bad PF, no cookie.

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=20235&p=273034

Pakellas was a complete train wreck from a design/UX perspective. Imagine if you had to micromanage rememorizing your spells constantly. That's pakellas. It hands control to the player that the player mostly doesn't need or want and that the designer shouldn't want him to have. Wands should have recharged passively with kills in a way that's carefully calibrated to keep wands like heal wounds under control.

The magic potion thing was an amazing development. What clearer indication could there have been that the entire mp/active recharge concept was a mistake than the mp micromanagement behavior the magic potions were supposed to address?

If evocations are so good that it's intrinsically problematic for a god to use evocations skill somehow (it's not), then the answer is a direct nerf to the evocations skill. Moving nemelex to invocations is silly. The effect on its power level is trivial and it takes the game in the wrong direction with respect to invocations, a skill that should be removed entirely.

Hellmonk wrote:Rods out for Pakellas.

Raise your wands! Raises a supercharged wand of heal wounds (13/13).

So I don't know where the "decision" is at (please update the thread if anyone knows) , but removing something that could be an enjoyable choice doe not make complete sense. Addressing (as people have said on the thread) the fundamental evocation / invocation issues seems like the way to go, and the nerf of rods, and general balance rather than just deletion. Also is there a thread where a constructive redesign may take place or is this it?

You may not like that pakellas got disabled, but you have to understand why it was, the god doesnt add anything to the table, he just expands already existing game mechanics, bringing more issues than features. If tomorrow a god like Oka got removed i wouldnt like it, but i sure would understand, as he also falls into this description(though he doesnt bring issues).

I actually am fine with him getting disabled. I just am reacting against the idea to utterly remove and not think about re-design. The intrinsic mechanics of an ego based , gadget loot based god is good. I support time to redesign and a temp disable. Just asking for a forum to make it right cause I have ideas on how he can work well and I'd like to supply them for discussion and hopeful re-implmentation of the god.

Spoiler: show

spent hours on this
RODSOUT

robotcentaur wrote:I actually am fine with him getting disabled. I just am reacting against the idea to utterly remove and not think about re-design. The intrinsic mechanics of an ego based , gadget loot based god is good. I support time to redesign and a temp disable. Just asking for a forum to make it right cause I have ideas on how he can work well and I'd like to supply them for discussion and hopeful re-implmentation of the god.

The problem is probably not that no one on the dev team has ideas about how to fix Pakellas. More likely, there are people with ideas about how it can't be fixed.

Right, and I'd like to challenge the "can't be fixed" assumptions.

There's an idea for a fix in this very thread, and even as a patch...

Turn it into a general-artifacts god whose interests extend to machines/gadgetry as well. Nerf the Evoc stuff a bit and throw a few "artificial magical creature" battlesphere/servitor-/golem-esque spells in there.

Reliance on devices: Simulate player atrophy due to over-reliance on whiz-bang gadgets. Make the player's regen slow down 1 level when they join (or hit their stats now and then), so Pakellas becomes a more balanced/strategic choice, and so the player has to rely on Evoc (and, by extension, artificial healing). This avoids making Evoc seem like it's crap without Pakellas. Slow Vine Stalker regen down to normal so they still have something. Play the whole thing off like it's part of Pakellas' experiment (perhaps to make an adventurer that can take the Orb, without concern for the player's well-being?).
"Your proficiency with magical devices grows. You feel your mortal essence fade a little."

Yes that is a good direction. I think the recharge penalty of reducing max charges is good. I like the idea of destroying the devices for benefit, but not necessary for pots of magic cause that leads to one of the micro-manage problems.

Breaking items is an idea I've wanted to see. Pakellas seems like a bit of a mad scientist; finding out what happens when you break something plays into the theme of that.

My idears:
Implement breaking at piety 0. Make the effects dependent on device type. Maybe you get a Might buff, maybe you get hasted, maybe you get red-Drained. Make it as random as potion effects but more extreme, so there's more of a risk/reward mechanic. And then turn things on their head a bit by making the wand of random effects the one breakable item that has consistently good results (beneficial mutations?).
Move wand-charge-identification to Piety **. That makes it less influential in the early game item-identifying/inventory roulette stuff that goes on. Pakellas servitors start using ID scrolls on wands again (or relying on zap-ID'ing) as they would with other gods. Having them ALL identified right off the bat is a bit overpowered.

There's a load of ways to reinvent Pakellas that are in keeping with the design of the game while still being novel enough to support Pakellas' existence. Heck, there's enough mechanics in play that we could make Pakellas and Nemelex the Sif/Vehumet of Evocations, with completely different sets of abilities on offer, before you even get to the items/gifts themselves...

If there were something in Pakellas to be salvaged, the dev team would have done it. In general, they're very reluctant to remove mechanics. The fact is, Pakellas added nothing new to the game.

duvessa wrote:The fact is, Pakellas added nothing new to the game.

Except reliable way to get a rod and wands which is a huge deal.

Maybe Pakellas isn't mechanically sound to some, but no need to ditch the theme and flavor that it brought. I like the idea of deities sometimes being a more aesthetic or stylistic thing. There are some gods that I only pick because I like how they go with my character, and I'm basically playing atheist then apart from passive abilities. Picking Nemelex is as good as going atheist for me anyway, so I get to pretend my character is just really into collectible card games.

A dungeon is a weird-ass place, even by comparison to a lot of other video game levels. A lot of folks I watch complain that Pakellas altars look like an oddity that doesn't belong, and that Pakellas itself is a misfit - but that might be exactly why they're appealing. Maybe Evoc isn't the right place to start with a mad scientist god of gadgetry, and Pakellas could be reworked as a magic god designed to complement, say, hybrid characters... *shrug*

hi every1 im new!!!!!!! holds up rod my name is pakellas but u can call me t3h TrAiNwReCk oF d3s19n!!!!!!!! lol…as u can see im very random!!!! thats why i came here, 2 meet random gods like me _… im 1 version old (im mature 4 my age tho!!) i like 2 watch webtiles chat w/ my girlfreind xom (im bi if u dont like it deal w/it) its our favorite show!!! bcuz its SOOOO random!!!! shes random 2 of course but i want 2 meet more random ppl =) like they say the more the merrier!!!! lol…neways i hope 2 make alot of freinds here so give me lots of commentses!!!!
EVOCAAAAAAAATIONNS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! <--- me bein random again _^ hehe…toodles!!!!!

I'm usually the first to complain about removals nowadays (how the things change), but honestly I can't disagree with the commit. I don't think Evocations are interesting enough to warrant a god. Shame to see that work being wasted, but oh well.

dynast wrote:You may not like that pakellas got disabled, but you have to understand why it was, the god doesnt add anything to the table, he just expands already existing game mechanics, bringing more issues than features. If tomorrow a god like Oka got removed i wouldnt like it, but i sure would understand, as he also falls into this description(though he doesnt bring issues).

What gods don't just expand already existing game mechanics?

I agree that Pakellas had issues, but I think she's very salvegable. I guess she does raise some design questions about evocables and spells and why we have both, especially in her current form...

#removespells

Pak is very very "salvageable" . Evocation is a valid sub game with a trainable skill, varied loot (some wielded, some not, some recharge by time, some recharge by experience, etc etc etc) making a rich system that could have a god.... just like money , the abyss, all the other subsystems.

Reposting my old suggestion: make wands stack like in dcssca (for all characters, not just pak worshipers). Then instead of giving you recharging, Pak just gifts lots of random wands. Sometimes you will get extra charges of paralysis/haste/HW but those will be much rarer than the current system, whereas you'll use more of the less-popular wands like lightning or confusion etc.

To me, the main draw of Pakellas design-wise was the ability to get rod and wand spellpower above what Evocs 27 would give you.

Play-wise, the main draw was the effectively infinite healing and hasting and paralysis etc. I knew that was broken, but I likes the evocables enhancer. I wouldn't mind an object that did that, then I wouldn't need Pakellas at all.

Sar wrote:Shame to see that work being wasted

I'm really, really tired of seeing this. Removing bad features doesn't waste any work. The work making the bad feature was already wasted as soon as it was performed, because the feature was bad. You might as well say "shame to see that work being wasted" whenever someone fixes a bug or replaces a tile.

I'm not you, so I don't think a feature like Pakellas is inherently shit because it doesn't fit some design goals I imagine existing for Crawl or because it's a yet another feature in a game you want to be stripped of those. It was a feature, it existed, people enjoyed it (I know it for a fact), but developers didn't think it fit in the game and I happen to agree with them here. Hence, makes sense for me to regret the work going to waste.

I believe it can be considered wasted work indeed. We can theoretically assume that it is possible to create a new Pakellas which is perfect and devs did 20% (or 40% or whatever number you want) of required work and then abandoned the project.

If that 20% ever existed, then it was never wasted. It's still there if someone wants to do the other 80%. Pakellas didn't get erased from spacetime.

As a felid, Pakellas was better than Trog, but not very good. (Magicless felid has no ranged attacks, so is fairly bad; wands for ranged attacks is better than NO ranged attacks that Trog forces) felids don't get rods, so...I guess what I'm saying is a just wands (no rods) Pakellas isn't over powered...especially given the high cost (no MP regen/channeling meaning little real magic, no spirit shield, no Staff of Dispater (which is the best evoker, period once you steal it))...

At least it's not wasted work if the developer(s) learned something in the process!

on the bright side, there's space for another god with P!

I'm really, really tired of seeing this. Removing bad features doesn't waste any work. The work making the bad feature was already wasted as soon as it was performed, because the feature was bad. You might as well say "shame to see that work being wasted" whenever someone fixes a bug or replaces a tile.

Well done, I concur, it's a silly sentiment. It's not like we're talking money or lives here, someone does this in there free time, they changed their mind, o well, really not something to be sorry over.

ahappydouche wrote:
I'm really, really tired of seeing this. Removing bad features doesn't waste any work. The work making the bad feature was already wasted as soon as it was performed, because the feature was bad. You might as well say "shame to see that work being wasted" whenever someone fixes a bug or replaces a tile.

Well done, I concur, it's a silly sentiment. It's not like we're talking money or lives here, someone does this in there free time, they changed their mind, o well, really not something to be sorry over.

Man don't do this to me when you have 2 total posts, you look like a sockpuppet

Bcadren wrote:As a felid, Pakellas was better than Trog, but not very good.

bruh

1. Make wands stack. I can't think of a good argument against this and it always annoys me when I have to go into my autopickup to fiddle with junk wands so that I don't get stopped every time there is a wand of flame on the ground.
2. Make Pakellas passively recharge all wands, and increase the speed of rod recharging
3. Bring back the old MP conduct, as in, MP on kills with a freeze in MPRegen
4. Make device surge a buff with duration depending on invo and costing piety, but also make your evocables cost MP. When your MP runs out, so does device surge. Other option: make devices used during surge use twice as many charges.
5. Keep supercharge as is

There, Pakellas is now much less fiddly.

Yes! The one good Pak reform suggestion that I've seen!

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