What is the point of God wrath?

[danr]

It seems to me that starting over at 0 piety is bad enough. Does it make the game more balanced to have players spend 3000 turns on tedious L1 spell spamming to wait out God wrath?

I think the game would be more fun if you could switch Gods more easily.

[MrMisterMonkey]

https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... :god:wrath

[wwf]

I think god wrath is useful. If there was no wrath, then choosing a god would not be a big decision. Crawl is about making decisions now about things that will impact your survivability later on.

Gods accept worshipers to further the god's goals. In return, the player who abides by the god's goals gains access to abilities bestowed by the god. These abilities help the player help the player to varying degrees. Abandoning a god means that you just wanted access to the abilities, but did not care about the god's goals. You used the god as an invocation machine. They will get mad.

I think a god should punish the apostate

• in a way that does not conflict with the god's goals,
• using the god's existing powers, and
• and should strive to negate the advantages that were bestowed on the player.

And just for a reality check, the punishment should have a positive effect on the game play and try to prevent scumming and boring ways to avoid the consequences.

Here is a list of some ideas that I have come up with. I expect many of them will be unworkable.

Ashenzari should take away the knowledge that you have gained.

• Ashenzari should give you amnesia. Forgetting scrolls, potions and wands is easy to deal with. Forgetting enchantments on items and maps is a bit more difficult to deal with. Forgetting stashes can be quite a problem.
• Ashenzari should curse items. In addition he should randomly turn scrolls that remove curses into scrolls that curse objects. Maybe he should do this when you read the scroll.
• Ashenzari should keep you bound but not provide any of the benefits. This fits his goals.

Beogh should still support orcs, just not you.

• Beogh should upgrade orcs that the user encounters for the rest of the game.

Cheibriados is still not in a rush.

• In addition to slowing you, Che should prevent hasting or swiftness.
• Cheibriados should pick bad times to slow you.
• Cheibriados should also drain stats that he formerly boosted.

Elyvilon is still a pacifist.

• Should both dull and curse your wielded weapon.
• Should drain most or all of you invocation skills. (Elyvilon is often used to train this skill before switching to another god.)
• Break up fights by blinking or teleporting combatants.
• Turn monsters passive or just reducing the experience gained by killing them.

Fedhas Madash still encourages plant growth.

• Should also upgrade hostile plants to more dangerous plants.
• Reduce or remove experience gained by killing plants.

Jiyva is still mindless.

• Continue stat shuffling.
• Drain intelligence.

Kikubaaqudgha still wants legions of undead.

• Destroy holy items in your possession.
• Interfere with necromantic spells. Maybe even reduce your skill necromancy skill.
• Deny XP from kills of undead.
• Resurrect corpses as undead just after you killed them.

Lugonu is still rebels against any type of structure.

• Corrupt level you are on. (Imagine holing up in a corridor to fend off a crowd and then having Lugonu corrupt the level.)
• Make distortion weapons backfire if you still use them.

Makhleb still likes to destroy. You're just on the top of the list.

• Loose power and/or HP when killing a demon.
• Reduce or deny XP gain from killing demons.

Okawaru would like to see you loose a battle.

• Induce weakness (the counterpart of might).
• Induce slowness (the counterpart of haste).

The Shining One sees you as unholy from now on.

• Reclaim any holy item you have access to.
• Make you vulnerable to negative energy.
• Reduce or eliminate XP gain from killing holy beings.

Trog still hates magic.

• Randomly burn spell books you hold or try to memorize from.
• Make you go berserk after casting a spell.
• Increase exhaustion time after berserk and increase chance of fainting.

Vehumet still is all about destructive magic.

• Reduce your conjugation skill.
• Reduce power/range of destructive spells.
• Increase cost of spells.
• Boost enemy spell caster powers.

Xom is still insane.

• Maybe you can abandon him, but he will never abandon you.
• Bore him (and suffer his acts) until he looses interest in you.

Yredelemnul is still the god of death.

• Drain you.
• Mirror some damage to inflict back to you.

Nemelex Xobeh, Sif Muna, and Zin already have punishments consistent with their goals.

In addition, I think that some of these punishments should last the rest of the game.
This can counteract benefits (god gifts) that are not ever taken away.

[jpeg]

I think god wrath is useful. If there was no wrath, then choosing a god would not be a big decision. Crawl is about making decisions now about things that will impact your survivability later on.

Gods accept worshipers to further the god's goals. In return, the player who abides by the god's goals gains access to abilities bestowed by the god. These abilities help the player help the player to varying degrees. Abandoning a god means that you just wanted access to the abilities, but did not care about the god's goals. You used the god as an invocation machine. They will get mad.

I think a god should punish the apostate

• in a way that does not conflict with the god's goals,
• using the god's existing powers, and
• and should strive to negate the advantages that were bestowed on the player.

And just for a reality check, the punishment should have a positive effect on the game play and try to prevent scumming and boring ways to avoid the consequences.

Quoted For Truth.

Except for this:

Ashenzari should take away the knowledge that you have gained.

• Ashenzari should give you amnesia. Forgetting scrolls, potions and wands is easy to deal with. Forgetting enchantments on items and maps is a bit more difficult to deal with. Forgetting stashes can be quite a problem.
• Ashenzari should curse items. In addition he should randomly turn scrolls that remove curses into scrolls that curse objects. Maybe he should do this when you read the scroll.
• Ashenzari should keep you bound but not provide any of the benefits. This fits his goals.

... all of your ideas are extremely good. Your suggestions for Ash are flavourful but would be easy to circumvent by taking notes beforehand (on item types and enchantments), and thus would introduce grinding. Now if some item types were forgotten and shuffled... But even that won't work for items in inventory and might lead to players dividing their stashes into different types of items, so they can easily map the types to the new descriptions. Yes, this seems unlikely, but that's exactly the sort of behaviour we don't want to encourage.

Please add your suggestions to the wiki. It would be a shame if they got lost.

In addition, I think that some of these punishments should last the rest of the game.

That is being planned.

[szanth]

It makes perfect sense that gods would have some kind of wrath when you stop following them. At the same time, though, the end result is that most players just don't leave their gods, and the ones that do, they're able to circumvent it somehow by just waiting, which sounds like something the devs wouldn't want to encourage.

[danr]

Another option would be to simply remove the option of switching Gods.

Or, how about this mechanic:
- First, you have to recant your religion - you can't just switch over.
- When you recant, you should lose any lasting gifts you've acquired - books, weapons, armour, stats. So no using TSO just for weapon blessing and then leaving him - these are wiped from the dungeon wherever they happen to be.
- When you try to join a new faith, the new God demands that you prove your commitment by completing a very tough challenge. The Temple could have an Arena area that you have to enter and come out alive from.

What I don't like about God wrath is that it is just so everlasting, not that it is hard to deal with. I'd rather deal with the challenge, either pass it or die, and then get on with the game.

Anyway, the current level of God wrath, and the fact that I usually die in the mid game, keep me from ever switching Gods anyway.

[Shade]

It seems to me that starting over at 0 piety is bad enough. Does it make the game more balanced to have players spend 3000 turns on tedious L1 spell spamming to wait out God wrath?

I think the game would be more fun if you could switch Gods more easily.

This may be a little crass but, "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with" comes to mind as a big problem with mitigating divine wrath. I'm all for 'smarter or better wrath' so long as it still very dangerous, but a god shouldn't be a 'cheap date', IMHO.

[dpeg]

Interesting ideas. As it happens, I have just revamped the wrath wiki page. There is some urgency to redo wraths (see wiki for more details): currently, wrath can be scummed (waited out by proper preparation); it is too harsh to switch early on; it is sometimes abusable. Also, we need better wraths to move on with Lugonu (search for "Lugonu" on the dev wiki).

https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php?id=dcss:brainstorm:god:wrath

Feedback in there is welcome, I will reply. (That overhaul is not finished; the new proposal as stated is still prone to wait-it-out grinding.)

Regarding instanteous wrath: I don't think that's ideal. First, players can easily avoid that (if Okawaru sends monsters, wait next to a teleport trap, or read teleporation scroll, wait turn, abandon). Wrath should be an on-going affair: your god looked after you in good times, and he'll surely look after you in disgust during the bad times.

[dpeg]

The idea is to make the instantaneous wrath effects permanently relevant. So no monster summons.

How?

How can punish Okawaru the player meaningfully in a single action? Removing all gifts is one thing, but that's not nearly enough and I don't see another fitting idea. Permanent stat loss or the like is something I really want to avoid.

I don't see what's wrong with Okuwaru (to continue the example) sending appropriate monsters after you, and demanding you to work down wrath by killing them.

By the way, instand and permanent wrath effects would render my Lugonu vision impossible, which is clearly something I don't want

[dpeg]

You and other developers have repeatedly expressed what's wrong with Okawaru sending monsters after you: players can tediously grind it away.

If you read the new wrath proposal on the wiki, you'd see that it is possible (and not so complicated) to remove the tedium aspect.

[dtsund]

Shameless plug of one of my own relevant ideas.