Elyvilon rework

[sdynet]

hi.
The new theme. Raise a new thread.

suggestion for ely's revamp

ely wants to aid others, its the deity of who loves peace. but he(she) is a realist, and its doctrine has no 'forbid taking other's life'. like tiger preys rabbit is no sin, if someone harms other for survival is no sin. but ely demands, 'do favor' if you can, if opponent is ready to accept mercy, 'show mercy'.

ely likes when you do this...
explore, destroy opponent's evil weapon
there is 2 ways ely's worshiper can get piety, one of them is explore. good folk's life is way of hardship, worshiping ely means they wants to tread thorny way. retaining faith in ely itself is ely's trial. ely knows that very well, so ely only pleased when devotees accept hardships that press their lives heavily and overcome it in every moments.
(way of hardship : an altruistic behavior for foes to seek right values by abandoning fast, easy, mighty powers)

second is, when opponent swings evil weapons, ely tries to destroy it, and if it succeed ely will be pleased.
ely don't deny existence of weapons. weapons itself do not have any goodwill or malice. but evil weapons forged for naught but evil consequences, so ely always have its eyes for such things, and deny its existence when it becomes used.

Q: why ely won't be pleased when heal others?
A: because good acts aren't deeds of expecting rewards. healing abilities are only means of good acts, so it can't be reward for it.

Ely dont likes...
inactivity (degrades 1 per 1000 turns)
cannibalism
such act incurs penance(or excommunication)
Casting any Necromancy or unholy spell. (Penance)
Knowingly using an evil item. (Penance)
Attacking or killing a non-hostile holy being. (Penance)
Attacking a neutral being. (Penance)
Letting your allies kill a non-hostile holy being. (Penance)
Killing your allies. (Penance)
Drinking a potion of blood. (Penance)
Killing living monsters while Divine Protection is active. (Penance)
Casting Necromutation. (Excommunication)

major change
1. ely no longer requires invo skills. since ely wont be pleased from act of worshiping. only believers' suffering proves their worth.

2. from worshiping ely gives permanent buff named peace*.
when you get damage from foes, there is a chance that buff's stack increases, if gained damage is high, or its source from unholy attacks, chance will be highly increases. max stacks up to 9.
*needs better idea for its name, perhaps.

3. heal, great heal, heal other, divine vigor no longer requires piety. instead, devotees can use heal or pacify monster by consuming peace stack. its efficiency determined by piety and number of peace stacks.
heal : consume 1~3 peace stacks.
great heal : requires at least 4 peace stacks, consume all peace stacks.
heal other : consume all peace stacks. can be used even with single peace stack.
divine vigor : requires at least 4 peace stacks, consume all peace stacks. increases max hp and mana + while infused with divine vigour, every acts requires hunger halved(even evo hunger can be reduced with this)

4. only purification, divine protect uses piety.
purification : uses 2 piety. reduces magic contamination, corrodes, drains as well. can't remove exh.
divine protection : same as before

5. if foe attacks worshiper with evil weapons, there is a chance of its weapon broken. when it happens worshiper gains piety by low chance.



in first, i'd like to address 'reality of ely' and would explain ely's revamp.
in players ranked by total score, number of players who worshiped ely within 1000th rank is only 3.
in tournament score, lets take a place with wins by god category, ely's score was 59 in 0.14. in 0.15 it become 68, and it increased to 85 in 0.16, then finally became 78 in 0.17.
of course, trying to explaining whole picture by simple numbers might be silly, but it could explain what it means.
they think ely is no fun.
they think ely is too hard to play.
they think ely is too weak.

we should revamp ely, regardless of its result, it should be done now.

why we should change ely in this way?
nowadays dcss heads to play [Intuitive ways]. it might have some different views, i guess most of crawlers would agree that.
for me, it has good side and bad side as well. but, sure thing is this tendency transparently opposite way from (old)ely's playstyle, so its been discarded.
so ely got rollback to original dungeon crawl's playstyle, its become straightforward... but it lost its charm.
so, here's the question:
then, we need to rollback once again as when it had piety from pacifying?
no. its not possible. so many crawlers think its boring way.

gain piety from pacifying opponent, its very old way now. it can't be accepted. but, it was identity of ely.
even more, ely's abilities had high frequency of usage, in past, it could be managed by pacifying...
nowadays current system makes gain piety only from explore, its totally broken. reducing used piety's amount might be an alternative.

but, as you could know, not many played ely in old versions, and also in recent versions. if it compared by cars, even you change its fuel(means of piety gain) buyer's comment would not change that greatly.

Car's frames(divine abilities) are difficult to change.
The frames that could've been used by car named Ely was used in other models(for instance ability like Zin's Sanctuary could've been Ely's). Also it is unclear whether it is its frame or engine(the piety management system) that people dislike.
Thus, it is logical to first try changing its engine which is easier to fix, than its frame which may be difficult to change.

Why should it change like this?
Crawl's recent changes aim for intuitive plays, and changing Ely's piety management seems fine for this purpose.
Ely's nature makes her abilities spammed and the piety cost and player's stress caused by it should be removed.
So, [peace] is the mechanics introduced to use abilities like minor/major healing, heal other or divine vigor preventing player stress and spamming at the same time.
You may wonder why should we implement a mechanism like this and what this mechanism has to do with Ely?
What Ely wants from her followers is mercy and peace, upon striking others Ely will tolerate but will not provide any powers for those actions.
However, if her followers do not take the easy road of violence and suffer from self-mortification she will be proud.
When injured by the self-mortification, she will provide little comfort(peace) to compensate.
It is possible to use the comfort provided for oneself(using minor/major healing), or others(heal other).
Peace, is not the compensation for faith, it is a staff that aid walking the road of mercy and peace.

Cleanse and Divine Protection is rather difficult to implement and use under this [peace] mechanism. So these abilities seems better left as it is now for is simple to use when they cost piety, and that cost seems adequate. Or maybe lesser/greater healing could be merged just like lesser/greater heal other merged.

Piety gain from destroying evil weapons is intended to help Ely's followers from recovering piety loss from using using abilities like Divine Protection, for gaining piety solely from dungeon exploring is rather difficult.

I do not expect all of my opinions will be reflected in game and I admit I may have missed some problems.
For instance, one major heal using all [peace] stacks could mean that followers of Ely are more prone to series of threats and may make Ely a worse version of wands of healing.
So I hope for various suggestions to improve her.
And I hope that one day Ely may become a welcomed choice for dcss players.
Thanks for reading.

[KoboldLord]

Generally speaking, requiring the player to deal with monsters in a specific way for a reward leads to degenerate behavior. In this case, your idea would mean that players get rewarded with future healing for allowing monsters to attack them; accordingly, players should go out of their way to get attacked and damaged by every non-dangerous monster, because they want a stockpile of healing ready when they fight something more dangerous. Furthermore, since all healing zeroes out the healing energy, the player is furthermore encouraged to keep a stock of non-dangerous monsters around that they can farm for more healing energy. This is not a good dynamic.

Personally, I find that Elyvilon is reasonably strong and useful throughout the game. Some numbers might benefit from tweaking, but I don't think there's any urgent need for large-scale changes.

[kizuato]

Some say Ely is good enough, but More say Ely needs some change.
I actually like Elyvilon, and I also like that 'horrible Pacifist runs', but she is too weak, comparing other gods.
That 'panic button thing' of Ely is even weaker than Pakellas. TSO heals you all the time after dungeon, Makhleb heals you, Jiyva heals you.
But Ely. Ely's power is useful but it's cost are too high, and require high Inv skill. almost useless when it's low.
KoboldLord acutely, and precisely point out the problem of peace system. I'm impressed. though I like the other part of changing. a few can be considered.

[sdynet]

Generally speaking, requiring the player to deal with monsters in a specific way for a reward leads to degenerate behavior. In this case, your idea would mean that players get rewarded with future healing for allowing monsters to attack them; accordingly, players should go out of their way to get attacked and damaged by every non-dangerous monster, because they want a stockpile of healing ready when they fight something more dangerous. Furthermore, since all healing zeroes out the healing energy, the player is furthermore encouraged to keep a stock of non-dangerous monsters around that they can farm for more healing energy. This is not a good dynamic.

Personally, I find that Elyvilon is reasonably strong and useful throughout the game. Some numbers might benefit from tweaking, but I don't think there's any urgent need for large-scale changes.

hmm, yes. (...get attacked and damaged by every non-dangerous monster...) Your opinion is right . It's fatal flaws. This improvement is needed .
For one thing, I can not agree .
Elyvilon is NOT STRONG. NOT FUN. Most Koreans think so.
and, Other nations user think so to.
Many materials are , proves this.
The most important thing is not his strength.
He has no charm. No one found him.
You do not know the severity .

[Shard1697]

Elyvilon is NOT STRONG. NOT FUN. Most Koreans think so.

Was there actually like... a poll on this, or are you just assuming you can speak for all Korean players?

At any rate Ely is definitely strong, at least.

[Siegurt]

Well for what it's worth, I'm not Korean, but I also find evy strong, but boring

Well strong enough anyway, not excessively so, just normal solid go-to strong.

Also not excessively boring, not like adds a crap ton of tedium to your game boring, just like I am never super excited to play evy, it is always like, "oh, ok, here is an evy altar, he is strong enough for what I am playing, so I guess I will take him, or whatever" I would never like celebrate an early evy altar, I would take it for sure, but not be like excited about it. Evy is like saving for retirement level of exciting.

[Tannedbear]

who talks about ely is still strong had actually played it since piety gain changed to only explore? there was only one god, ashenzari whos piety only earned by explore, but it was no big deal for it since its abilities are 'mostly' passive. but ely is definitely opposite, almost every abilities costs piety. so current version(i dont know 0.17 also counts, but trunk is sure) piety usage is really higher then earned unless you playing with easy race as vine stalker. and there is other problem also, ely is good god and has penance. and what if you got penanced at very late game? like once i got penance at zot 5(by killing orb guardian it spawned near stair while i running away with divine protection) and i had no way to earn piety unless i step aside and head to abyss. of course most every dungeon already explored(since i got 15 runes)
so what i wanted to say is, some developers dont know what happens if they changes something.

plus i heard healing amount via heal other(it determine opponent will be pacified or not) got really nerfed also.

so i ask to you again. did you played ely after its piety gain mechanism changed? i done it once (with vine stalker) and found some silly things.

plus, if ely is really that strong then why statistic says otherwise? why is so rare who won game as ely worshipper?

current ely's abilities are minor version than other god like zin, while ely's heal took player's whole 1 turn, zin's recite lasts few turns and although its random but might incapacitate several monsters. difference goes severe when compared purification between vitalization. ely only can cure and it took your turn as well each time you do so. but vit prevents so many nasty effects even rot, paralyse.

ely's golden age done when it lost piety gain via pacify. i'm not saying rollback ely to that moment, many think its really boring. and i agree that. but this nerf like merely changing piety gain, healing effeciency toward pacifying monster do nothing with making it fun to play.

and about feedback of ely's rework (like what if they allow weakling for free peace), id suggest give some restriction like .. hmm checking its hd and too weak opponent wont give peace or when player got actual damage then there is a chance of peace increases..?

[crate]

Ely is fine right now other than pacification chance being hidden, but if you actually think Ely is too weak it's very easy to change that (just make the abilities stronger). I don't see a need for other changes. There are so many gods now that a lot of them are not going to be popular because you can only have one god per game.

edit: I wonder if what's going on here is that players have an irrational reluctance to sit below 5-6* piety. While it is true that staying at 4* piety is really good for Ely (so you get greater heal), staying at 5-6* is not actually very helpful since divine vigour is too expensive to use outside of things like branch end vaults, and livesaving is an indication that things already went wrong (so it's ok if you don't always have access to those two abilities). If you're willing to drop to 4* (or even 3* in lair) then you really get quite a few uses of pacification.

I notice this with Fedhas discussions sometimes; players talk about Fedhas piety being hard to maintain, without realising that there's actually no reason to care about that since 1* is all you need for quite a long time.

That said it is possible that if Ely needs a buff (I'm not sure she does, but I will admit Ely is generally less good than the best gods in crawl) then increasing piety gain a bit would be fine.

(Also, in case it's not clear, you actually do get more piety by not "saving" it. In addition to not hitting the piety cap (thus losing piety gains to not being able to go over 200), crawl just flat reduces piety gains if your current piety is above some number.)

[Psieye]

edit: I wonder if what's going on here is that players have an irrational reluctance to sit below 5-6* piety.

It's definitely a phenomenon - they are used to other gods where 'fast-teching' to 5+* piety is the norm. So they see piety as 'that metric you increase as fast as possible', like EXP. I can't say if it applies to Ely specifically, but the 'piety must stay at 5*' phenomenon does happen to players.

[svendre]

I'm playing (locally) an Ely game. It seems reasonably powerful. I threw invocations into the mix and took it to around 15 so far. So far I haven't used the god for anything at all except Greater Healing once in awhile when the going gets rough. As a result I have a pretty large stash of healing potions left over. The thing with this god is that it seems boring. I see the other abilities, but I'm just not using them. I'm not really interested in pacifying monsters because I don't want less XP. The piety gain rate doesn't seem awful, or wonderful either just so/so. The thing with it, is that it doesn't feel like you're getting a lot of piety for doing anything well (or not getting it for doing something badly.) The mechanism requiring exploration seems like it is punishing a bit in terms of trying to push through the game faster, because you don't get extra piety just because you're exploring much more dangerous areas relative to your level (at least that I know of.)

I'm not sure really what could be done to make Ely more interesting. Maybe piety gain could depend on the area you're exploring versus your level. If Ely wants you to heal other stuff, perhaps she could gift you a couple friends like a pet animal or a mercenary. Another idea is that she could passively amplify all sources of healing such as potions and wands to a greater level of effect. Maybe she could amplify regen effects. Trolls would love her, anyway.

[KoboldLord]

Heal Other is for spot-control of monsters that aren't worth the risk or investment for killing normally. It's very strong at that job. You just say, "Rupert? No, no Rupert in this game." And then Rupert is gone. Heal Other is good enough to justify making invocations a primary skill for an Elyvilon character. I like to be fairly liberal with its use, and I don't worry too much if I burn most of my excess piety on it. Being able to choose not to fight at will is all I really need from a deity, in most cases.

[Siegurt]

who talks about ely is still strong had actually played it since piety gain changed to only explore? there was only one god, ashenzari whos piety only earned by explore, but it was no big deal for it since its abilities are 'mostly' passive. but ely is definitely opposite, almost every abilities costs piety. so current version(i dont know 0.17 also counts, but trunk is sure) piety usage is really higher then earned unless you playing with easy race as vine stalker. and there is other problem also, ely is good god and has penance. and what if you got penanced at very late game? like once i got penance at zot 5(by killing orb guardian it spawned near stair while i running away with divine protection) and i had no way to earn piety unless i step aside and head to abyss. of course most every dungeon already explored(since i got 15 runes)
so what i wanted to say is, some developers dont know what happens if they changes something.

plus i heard healing amount via heal other(it determine opponent will be pacified or not) got really nerfed also.

so i ask to you again. did you played ely after its piety gain mechanism changed? i done it once (with vine stalker) and found some silly things.

plus, if ely is really that strong then why statistic says otherwise? why is so rare who won game as ely worshipper?

current ely's abilities are minor version than other god like zin, while ely's heal took player's whole 1 turn, zin's recite lasts few turns and although its random but might incapacitate several monsters. difference goes severe when compared purification between vitalization. ely only can cure and it took your turn as well each time you do so. but vit prevents so many nasty effects even rot, paralyse.

ely's golden age done when it lost piety gain via pacify. i'm not saying rollback ely to that moment, many think its really boring. and i agree that. but this nerf like merely changing piety gain, healing effeciency toward pacifying monster do nothing with making it fun to play.

and about feedback of ely's rework (like what if they allow weakling for free peace), id suggest give some restriction like .. hmm checking its hd and too weak opponent wont give peace or when player got actual damage then there is a chance of peace increases..?

Yes, I have played many games with evy since the piety change, that is the version I was referring to as "reasonably strong but averagely boring"

The prior version was "stupidly strong if you were willing to have it also be mind numbingly soul crushingly tedious."

Win statistics are a measure of popularity, not power.

[edgefigaro]

The most important part of ely is a char who has trouble with lair. 10 invocations removes all lair threats, and you can then switch to either Zin or TSO after.

[Lasty]

Ely makes it really hard to die and can smite-kill most monsters in the game in a single turn. I agree with the posters who are calling her somewhat tedious, but I don't think she's weak by any means. I think crate probably put forward the best explanation for perceptions of her weakness.

Regarding displaying pacification chance, I'd be fine with a scheme for this that a) doesn't lie and b) doesn't reveal the max hp of the target monster. Patches welcome!

[Sar]

Well what if we, I dunno, divorce the pacification chance from monster's HP and then just show it???

[Kate]

Well what if we, I dunno, divorce the pacification chance from monster's HP and then just show it???

Sadly "I dunno, divorce the pacification chance from monster's HP" isn't C++ that compiles, but yes, that is a thing that has been discussed in the past. It's certainly a reasonable approach, but nobody has yet proposed or coded anything more detailed as far as I'm aware.

[dpeg]

I was mainly responsible for giving pacification to Elyvilon in the first place. The idea was to put something active on a god that did nothing but healing. The thematic "decree of pacifism" was already there. Then the hope was that giving Elyilvon an active power to deal with monsters is cool, and even a playing style. The bit with the playing style turned out to work not so well, sorry about it that. The rest is reasonably okay, I guess, given the design restriction imposed on us (or at least, perceived by me).

If someone has ideas for thematic, reasonable active-ish powers: tell us!

sdynet: It is always tempting to use player damage for design. However, this rarely works, because players can and will abuse this. It's a pity.
Secondly, power is not a concern: if we think that Elyvilon is too weak, there are very many (and simple!) ways to buff her. If we think that Elyvilon is too boring -- now, that's a much harder problem. (I think that current Elyvilon is okay design-wise, but (a) I have played old (pre-DCSS) Elyvilon and (b) I've largely design current Elyvilon, so I'm biased.

[HardboiledGargoyle]

Elyvilon could be the god that gives you full information on monster HP, both current and maximum, since she's keen on physiology and everything.
Kind of like how Ashenzari leaked monster brands and such, before it was universalized and everybody could see that anyway.
Then there's no issue of "revealing" max hp since, you know, it's right there already. Sounds good?

edit: it's a nice perk that has awesome flavor and is easier to implement than Sar's suggestion since all you do is replace e.g. "heavily wounded" with "at 9/19 HP".

[Psieye]

Just started a quick game of FoFi^Ely. She's as powerful (and food intensive) as I remember her before the piety change. Perhaps the 'fun' issue comes down to flavour - I never considered myself the benevolent healer when playing under Ely. I was the wicked community breaker who would make victims suddenly forget all their loyalties when an angry mob is waiting outside a choke point (or in a long corridor). Said angry mob would then take out their anger on the victim. Alternatively, the victim would path to the nearest staircase... which I'm standing on so it'd get aggressive towards anything on that path - like the squishy orc priest between me (stairs) and it. Smite-targeted loyalty-erasure is fun.