Inverse Piety?

[Greyr]

I had this idea for a god that upon worshiping grants you the full 200 piety. Now the idea here is that the piety is not only spent but, is encouraged to be spent.

I've read quite a few threads about gods that function as a shop, but more to the point, a sole powerful ally god. It could be interesting seeing this piety system in action. When a 100 piety ally dies, 100 piety is restored and you now have 100 piety to spend (piety is not earned, but given). Obviously there would be some sort of restriction to this, (hunger, contam, etc) but I was wondering what everyone thinks of the general idea.

I'm no programmer... So I don't even know if this is something that could be reasonably coded.

[King_jelly]

Sounds pretty interesting. I'd like to see a conventional use of piety like that... could be a lot of fun. Hopefully others agree.... but you know...

[Siegurt]

The idea behind piety is that you have to invest something into a god before you got something back out of it.

A god that rewarded you in a significant fashion immediately on worship with no drawbacks would probably not work.

On top of which, there's no real reason to reverse the piety chart in the manner you describe for the particular suggestion you made, if your suggestion is that you start with 200 piety, and can use 100 of it for the creation of an ally which refunds you 100 piety on it's death, the "traditional" model works just as well, where you start with 0 piety, get 100 piety for creating an ally, and lose 100 piety on the ally's death.

Looking at it from that perspective it looks strange indeed to be rewarded with a very large chunk of piety for using an ability which helps you in a significant way.

Keep thinking, but I don't see any way this particular suggestion has much use for this game.

[Greyr]

The idea behind piety is that you have to invest something into a god before you got something back out of it.

A god that rewarded you in a significant fashion immediately on worship with no drawbacks would probably not work.

On top of which, there's no real reason to reverse the piety chart in the manner you describe for the particular suggestion you made, if your suggestion is that you start with 200 piety, and can use 100 of it for the creation of an ally which refunds you 100 piety on it's death, the "traditional" model works just as well, where you start with 0 piety, get 100 piety for creating an ally, and lose 100 piety on the ally's death.

Looking at it from that perspective it looks strange indeed to be rewarded with a very large chunk of piety for using an ability which helps you in a significant way.

Keep thinking, but I don't see any way this particular suggestion has much use for this game.

See the difference I was getting at between my idea (admitedly "inverse piety" doesn't really capture what I'm getting at) and the traditional model is that in the traditional model piety is theoretically infinite.
Whereas in my model a player makes the decision to "spend" the piety on something. That piety is in the ether. It's gone. You don't get it back until that ally is dead-- though to be clear the ally thing is just a nice way to explain the system.

Also, I did mention drawbacks, though admittedly they would probably have to be pretty harsh to prevent abuse.

One of the (many) potential problems I see with this and as you pointed out Siegurt is the immediate reward upon worship. A solution to this could be the gradual gain of piety through the normal means but then is retained and spent through the means I have suggested.

[Kate]

There's a (very old) devwiki proposal vaguely along these lines, where piety becomes a much more limited resource that you spend: https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... se:summons

[Greyr]

There's a (very old) devwiki proposal vaguely along these lines, where piety becomes a much more limited resource that you spend: https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... se:summons

I like that proposal quite a bit.

But fleshing out the current summoning school is probably more of an immediate concern than revisiting a god from a million years ago.

Alas, it's hard to come up with anything new for crawl these days

[and into]

I think it is a good idea Greyr, and could potentially work. I've had some experimental piety ideas myself—I think, however, that it can sometimes be difficult to get a good discussion going about an abstract mechanic, because how you imagine it playing out will probably be different than what others imagine. (A more concrete proposal is easier for people to discuss.)

Nonetheless, I'll try to throw in my two cents.

* One way this could work is that you start at low piety as usual, but then acquire piety in large "chunks" which you are then encouraged to spend on a permanent ally (or upgrade); when that ally dies you get (some of) the piety back to reinvest. If this is the case an ability that you get upon joining should allow you to immediately kill your perma-ally and get back (whatever percentage) of your piety, as you want to make it easy for players to just get rid of their ally if they want to upgrade or switch to a different type. (Rather than making them scum some sort of dangerous enough situation to get their ally killed, just in order to make a strategic decision; that would be annoying.)

* Another way this could work (completely different) is that you start at max piety with a god, and piety decays at a steady rate based on exploration and/or experience gain (though perhaps with a very, very slow piety decay by turncount as well). Perhaps some things can be rewarded with piety restoration—killing a strong unique rather than ignoring it, getting a rune, etc. All abilities with this god are shown in your a. screen right off the bat, but they are blacked out—you have to do other things to unlock them, which are not dependent upon level of piety. X enemies killed, Y uniques killed, you've set foot on Z total levels, you reached a certain character level—and so on. Basically, something like a god that encourages speedrunning (or something like it).

dpeg had an idea for volatile piety that, while different from this sort of idea, is interesting and at least related in so far as it is an unorthodox approach to piety.

An idea I've been kicking around is a god that has a parasitic theme. The god starts you at low piety, and grows stronger with more piety, like other gods. Where it differs is that it has no piety decay, and all of its abilities *give* you piety, rather than take it away. However, as you gain piety, you become weaker in various ways as the parasitic god feeds off of you. (Lowers stats, lowers max HP/MP, etc.)

[Greyr]

I think it is a good idea Greyr, and could potentially work. I've had some experimental piety ideas myself—I think, however, that it can sometimes be difficult to get a good discussion going about an abstract mechanic, because how you imagine it playing out will probably be different than what others imagine. (A more concrete proposal is easier for people to discuss.)
Nonetheless, I'll try to throw in my two cents.

* One way this could work is that you start at low piety as usual, but then acquire piety in large "chunks" which you are then encouraged to spend on a permanent ally (or upgrade); when that ally dies you get (some of) the piety back to reinvest. If this is the case an ability that you get upon joining should allow you to immediately kill your perma-ally and get back (whatever percentage) of your piety, as you want to make it easy for players to just get rid of their ally if they want to upgrade or switch to a different type. (Rather than making them scum some sort of dangerous enough situation to get their ally killed, just in order to make a strategic decision; that would be annoying.)

* Another way this could work (completely different) is that you start at max piety with a god, and piety decays at a steady rate based on exploration and/or experience gain (though perhaps with a very, very slow piety decay by turncount as well). Perhaps some things can be rewarded with piety restoration—killing a strong unique rather than ignoring it, getting a rune, etc. All abilities with this god are shown in your a. screen right off the bat, but they are blacked out—you have to do other things to unlock them, which are not dependent upon level of piety. X enemies killed, Y uniques killed, you've set foot on Z total levels, you reached a certain character level—and so on. Basically, something like a god that encourages speedrunning (or something like it).

dpeg had an idea for volatile piety that, while different from this sort of idea, is interesting and at least related in so far as it is an unorthodox approach to piety.

An idea I've been kicking around is a god that has a parasitic theme. The god starts you at low piety, and grows stronger with more piety, like other gods. Where it differs is that it has no piety decay, and all of its abilities *give* you piety, rather than take it away. However, as you gain piety, you become weaker in various ways as the parasitic god feeds off of you. (Lowers stats, lowers max HP/MP, etc.)

Lol, yes, I am aware my pitch was half assed-- at best. I suppose generating thought through ambiguity wasn't the best way to approach this.

Getting paid in chunks is interesting. I like the idea on paper, but would that encourage scumming for piety? Granted, it already is something that happens, albeit, rarely. But would saving up piety chunks to get X ability/ally/whatever be center to the usefulness of this god? I suppose I'm wary, not that I don't like the idea. The percentage of piety that the player gets back would probably the saving grace of crawl philosophy here.

As to the second idea, well, I've seen something similar.

https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... of_drama&s[]=stage

Not exactly the same, but same in that both encourage doing something a certain way for profit.
Not sure how I feel about that. That being said, I think your proposal is much better than the one linked.

Parasites are always a good idea. Just make sure they don't have a stupid name.
Passive aggression aside, I think that's pretty cool, both thematically and strategically. I would love to hear more about it.

[Siegurt]

See the difference I was getting at between my idea (admitedly "inverse piety" doesn't really capture what I'm getting at) and the traditional model is that in the traditional model piety is theoretically infinite.

Well, piety is capped at 200, and it's only infinite if the methods of gaining it are also infinite. If, for example, you gained piety when you gained experience levels, you would have a finite piety gain system. (Although if it's finite, but the absolute limit exceeds the likely game play, it's effectively infinite, for example Sif Muna could theoretically run out of ways to gain piety, but by the time all your spell casting skills are 27, you should have long ago won the game)

"Finite piety resources" is a good building block that could be used in a god proposal (And it doesn't matter a whit if the piety "gain" is measured from 0 to 200 or 200 to 0) and in a case where the resource is limited, being able to invest it, then get it refunded later is a good mechanism.

and_into's suggestion of a increasingly detrimental "leeching" god, where piety was easily added by the player, but it had a serious long term drawback, is an interesting one as well.

[Greyr]

See the difference I was getting at between my idea (admitedly "inverse piety" doesn't really capture what I'm getting at) and the traditional model is that in the traditional model piety is theoretically infinite.

Well, piety is capped at 200, and it's only infinite if the methods of gaining it are also infinite. If, for example, you gained piety when you gained experience levels, you would have a finite piety gain system. (Although if it's finite, but the absolute limit exceeds the likely game play, it's effectively infinite, for example Sif Muna could theoretically run out of ways to gain piety, but by the time all your spell casting skills are 27, you should have long ago won the game)

"Finite piety resources" is a good building block that could be used in a god proposal (And it doesn't matter a whit if the piety "gain" is measured from 0 to 200 or 200 to 0) and in a case where the resource is limited, being able to invest it, then get it refunded later is a good mechanism.

and_into's suggestion of a increasingly detrimental "leeching" god, where piety was easily added by the player, but it had a serious long term drawback, is an interesting one as well.

The "theoretical" infinite piety statement was incorrect, agreed. I need to work on how I word things.
However, I still feel there is a fundamental difference between how these two systems would operate.

-Traditional
Piety is gained temporarily and lost permanently.

-Inverse
Piety is gained permanently and lost temporarily.

^ Yeah, this is saying the same thing.
But in the context of a system where piety is given out in large chunks and when invested becomes temporarily inaccessible these two statements have very different implications

[Tiber]

* Another way this could work (completely different) is that you start at max piety with a god, and piety decays at a steady rate based on exploration and/or experience gain (though perhaps with a very, very slow piety decay by turncount as well). Perhaps some things can be rewarded with piety restoration—killing a strong unique rather than ignoring it, getting a rune, etc. All abilities with this god are shown in your a. screen right off the bat, but they are blacked out—you have to do other things to unlock them, which are not dependent upon level of piety. X enemies killed, Y uniques killed, you've set foot on Z total levels, you reached a certain character level—and so on. Basically, something like a god that encourages speedrunning (or something like it).

There was an old idea about a god pretty much exactly like this: https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=7005. This god starts you with full piety and nice passives, but would permanently excommunicate and punish you if you let piety run out (and gaining piety would either be impossible or require collecting runes).

An idea I've been kicking around is a god that has a parasitic theme. The god starts you at low piety, and grows stronger with more piety, like other gods. Where it differs is that it has no piety decay, and all of its abilities *give* you piety, rather than take it away. However, as you gain piety, you become weaker in various ways as the parasitic god feeds off of you. (Lowers stats, lowers max HP/MP, etc.)

An idea similar to this: https://crawl.develz.org/tavern/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5433 The discussion started out much different, but I eventually came upon a similar idea. Using abilities gives you piety. Higher piety grants you more powerful abilities, but makes the god act more often, and his actions almost always make the game more dangerous. To counter this, you have to sacrifice something (possibly from yourself) in order to lower piety.

[1010011010]

I can see the piety being encouraged to be spent permanent effects, specifically on allies, but inverse piety isn't necessary. Perhaps something based on and into's analysis, but I don't think piety chunks are nessercery:

Mentorio the mentor god - Mentorio loves the journey to become and creation of heroes. He will allow you to gain an ally which you will raise to become the best. in return you are given a partner to help you on your quest. (the allies could be all demigod and said to be his sons)

likes when you kill - up to 2* piety
likes it when your ally gains experience

dislikes it when your ally dies

* gain permanent ally : 0 cost can't be done if you have an ally. Gifts you a low level ally with semi-random skills. Ally is a level proportional to yours.
recall ally: 2MP, cross level recall.
** Upgrade equipment: small piety, hunger, gives or enchants a chosen piece of your ally equipment (new sword, armour, spell etc.) old equipment disappears not dropped.
*** no new abilities
**** Legendary equipment: large piety, similar to the previous ability but better, good artefacts available.
***** no new abilities.
****** no new abilities.

when your ally reaches 0 HP your god retrieves him and gives you piety based on how well you raised him. Although you start again, you have piety to spend on a new ally.

since there is not 5 or 6* abilities, your encouraged to spend to make a better ally. better ally makes it easier for you and since you gain piety when your well raised ally dies, you can bounce back on a new ally

[IronJelly]

I can see the piety being encouraged to be spent permanent effects, specifically on allies, but inverse piety isn't necessary. Perhaps something based on and into's analysis, but I don't think piety chunks are nessercery:

Mentorio the mentor god - Mentorio loves the journey to become and creation of heroes. He will allow you to gain an ally which you will raise to become the best. in return you are given a partner to help you on your quest. (the allies could be all demigod and said to be his sons)

likes when you kill - up to 2* piety
likes it when your ally gains experience

dislikes it when your ally dies

* gain permanent ally : 0 cost can't be done if you have an ally. Gifts you a low level ally with semi-random skills. Ally is a level proportional to yours.
recall ally: 2MP, cross level recall.
** Upgrade equipment: small piety, hunger, gives or enchants a chosen piece of your ally equipment (new sword, armour, spell etc.) old equipment disappears not dropped.
*** no new abilities
**** Legendary equipment: large piety, similar to the previous ability but better, good artefacts available.
***** no new abilities.
****** no new abilities.

when your ally reaches 0 HP your god retrieves him and gives you piety based on how well you raised him. Although you start again, you have piety to spend on a new ally.

since there is not 5 or 6* abilities, your encouraged to spend to make a better ally. better ally makes it easier for you and since you gain piety when your well raised ally dies, you can bounce back on a new ally

hate to pick this apart, but, well:

1) The name has to change. each God has their own letter (and TSO has the 1). We already have Makhleb, so this has to be different
2) The partners in fact, can not be demigods. as we already have the established fact that demigods do not follow a god, they would not be following this one to lead them to becoming your ally.
3) your first ability both says "low level ally" and "Ally is a level proportional to yours." Which is it?
4) Disliking when your ally dies, but rewarding you with piety to put into a new one is counter-intuitive.
5) No metric is given for "how well you raised him."

[Roderic]

The mechanics are rather diffuse but I like the flavour of investing piety on a tutorized ally

[Greyr]

From what I've gathered the developers are hesitant to implement a single ally god since the AI generally is'nt great

[1010011010]

1) The name has to change. each God has their own letter (and TSO has the 1). We already have Makhleb, so this has to be different

The name was a joke.

2) The partners in fact, can not be demigods. as we already have the established fact that demigods do not follow a god, they would not be following this one to lead them to becoming your ally.

Fair enough, It was a unnecessary addition for flavour.

3) your first ability both says "low level ally" and "Ally is a level proportional to yours." Which is it?

Both. Its an ally who has a low level relative to yours.

4) Disliking when your ally dies, but rewarding you with piety to put into a new one is counter-intuitive.

He "rewards" (it's more a compensation) you less than what you have spent, with an additional deduction for losing your ally. Just to stop ally scumming for a good start.

5) No metric is given for "how well you raised him."

It'll be total experience gained for your ally

The whole idea was a bare bones structure for encouraged piety use, notable the low level abilities that provide permanent boon and lack of any high level ones.