Faded altar improvements

[Shard1697]

No, I mean good design.

you haven't really established in any convincing manner that faded altars are badly designed

[duvessa]

I'm not interested in re-re-re-justifying my positions. Just clarifying that I did not mean what chequers thought I meant.

[galbolle]

Overflow altars appearing gradually make it that everytime one is weighting taking a "suboptimal" altar (either faded or not one's favourite god) versus waiting for the right altar to appear, only one level worth of piety is in the balance (plus bonus piety from the faded altar). On the other hand, if the player knew from the start the altar they're looking for is indeed quite a long ways away (say 8 levels further), then when they see a suboptimal altar they have to decide at once whether these 8 levels are worth waiting for. I think that'd make for a more interesting decision.

So my proposal is the following: in each game, there are two temples, the ecumenical one at the current depth with a selection of gods, and another one deeper with the rest of the temple gods. For instance, there could be an "elvish temple" somewhere in Elf. One or more faded altars in the ecumenical temple give the player a shot at the "deeper" gods. Some dungeon altars (faded or regular) might appear, but they're rare. That would work as a stick approach complementary with the extra piety carrot faded altars currently offer.

[VeryAngryFelid]

How about giving faded altar a very small chance to do something unusual to make it more distinct from worshiping first altar you meet? For example, 1% chance to give permanent "Unstable worship" mutation along with a random god it currently gives. You pray on the altar, get Okawaru with "Unstable worship" mutation and now you are temporarily switched to worshiping a random god 50% of time which is connected to XP so you cannot just rest it out. I mean after getting some XP (amount can be similar to one required to recharge lamp of fire), you lose Okawaru and worship another random god (Vehumet, for example) without losing piety and without any god wrath, after getting the same amount of XP with Vehumet you are switched back to Okawaru, after getting the same amount of XP with Okawaru you are switched to another random god (Xom, for example), then again back to Okawaru and so on, so you worship Okawaru about 50% time and the rest is distributed among other gods. It could be fun IMHO, main benefit is that it takes much time to try all gods who are currently in crawl (it took me more than a year) and faded altar might give some experience with many gods to new players.

Edit. Or maybe add it as a new type of altar with 100% chance instead of 1%, there is no need to change faded one.

[dowan]

I'm going to post a little lesson here about how to express an idea on a forum for discussion.

Step 1: Post a summary of your idea. Maybe make it grabby. Something like "Faded altars are never a good idea".

Step 2: This is critical, even more important than step 1. Here you explain why you believe the summarized version of your idea. Things like supporting evidence, math, formulas, stuff like that should go here. Without this step, step 1 is worse than pointless. Maybe here you'd say something like "The reason I say that is because you could just pick the first good altar you see, rather than gambling" or something like that.

The reason step 2 is so critical is this is the part people can actually discuss. I cannot disagree with your opinion, but I can disagree with your reasoning. Reasoning is important.

[and into]

I like gambling, but they have to be reasonable gambles. So, I like the idea of faded altars in the abstract, but in practice I never use them as currently implemented.

It isn't just about "optimization," either. Generally there is at least a few gods I do not want to worship for a particular character, including for reasons that have nothing to do with winning. For instance, if I just played two dudes who took Kiku, I'm probably not going to want to take Kiku again, if I'm just playing for fun. In such cases I'm not going to take the risk of getting stuck with a god I really do not want to worship. And in cases where I am playing to win, faded altar is still a bad gamble / decision in general. Thus, albeit for different reasons, I end up ignoring them in pretty much every game.

For newer players, apart from being a "newbie trap," it also involves a randomized outcome with more than 20 possibilities, each of which takes up more than one screen to learn about via help menu. So a new player intrigued by the altar but trying to judge if it is a good idea to gamble would have to stop playing and read a few thousand words before making the decision. Really not good.

In my view, a much more reasonable approach to faded altars is something like the following:

+ Each faded altar chooses four viable gods at random (e.g., no Yred for gargoyles, no TSO for demonspawn, etc.)
+ In xv and when trying to pray at it the game says something like, "You cannot quite make out to which deity this altar belongs, but it is one of the following. You won't be sure unless and until you commit yourself to worshiping at this altar. Whatever its identity, you expect the god will appreciate your restoration of this ancient altar." Then list the four gods.
+ If the player accepts the deity of the faded altar, you get one of the four gods listed, randomly chosen with equal weighting for each. You also get some extra piety, or equivalent bonus for Gozag/Xom/etc. The faded altar then becomes an altar to the appropriate god. ("Sif Muna is pleased that you restored an altar to its former glory!")


Benefits:

+ Each faded altar gives a different type of gamble, rather than the same (almost always bad) gamble
+ More than one faded altar could meaningfully spawn in the game and have an impact
+ Would sometimes be powerful, sometimes clearly bad, with varying degree of risks; this brings things closer to a "faded altar is like randart" situation rather than "faded altar is like acquiring food when not worshiping Fedhas" situation
+ No longer just a newbie trap!
+ Related to above: less information required to judge whether it is a good decision (only comparing 4 possible outcomes)


Overall much improved, I think.

[Shard1697]

That seems like a very reasonable middle ground.

[chequers]

My biggest concern with such an approach is it means every character should stop by the alter to see what gods it contains. That seems undesirable.

[Shard1697]

Why?

[Dingbat]

I too believe that and into is onto something.

I'm going to post a little lesson here about how to express an idea on a forum for discussion.

Step 1: Post a summary of your idea. Maybe make it grabby. Something like "Faded altars are never a good idea".

Step 2: This is critical, even more important than step 1. Here you explain why you believe the summarized version of your idea. Things like supporting evidence, math, formulas, stuff like that should go here. Without this step, step 1 is worse than pointless. Maybe here you'd say something like "The reason I say that is because you could just pick the first good altar you see, rather than gambling" or something like that.

The reason step 2 is so critical is this is the part people can actually discuss. I cannot disagree with your opinion, but I can disagree with your reasoning. Reasoning is important.

WOW!!
Thank you for enlightening us with your scholarly wisdom. You can pat yourself on the back knowing that you have single-handedly turned me away from an ideological repertoire of utter idiocy.

However, my good sir, here's an even more important lesson: getting all condescending with anyone who doesn't agree with your line of thought will make you look like a self-important prick. No shit, eh?

[dpeg]

and into: I certainly could see faded altars work like this!

Personally, I've used up my share of this mechanic (Nemelex' Triple Draw, Gozag's potions), so I am happy it enters from someone else.

[jwoodward48ss]

I too believe that and into is onto something.

I'm going to post a little lesson here about how to express an idea on a forum for discussion.

Step 1: Post a summary of your idea. Maybe make it grabby. Something like "Faded altars are never a good idea".

Step 2: This is critical, even more important than step 1. Here you explain why you believe the summarized version of your idea. Things like supporting evidence, math, formulas, stuff like that should go here. Without this step, step 1 is worse than pointless. Maybe here you'd say something like "The reason I say that is because you could just pick the first good altar you see, rather than gambling" or something like that.

The reason step 2 is so critical is this is the part people can actually discuss. I cannot disagree with your opinion, but I can disagree with your reasoning. Reasoning is important.

WOW!!
Thank you for enlightening us with your scholarly wisdom. You can pat yourself on the back knowing that you have single-handedly turned me away from an ideological repertoire of utter idiocy.

However, my good sir, here's an even more important lesson: getting all condescending with anyone who doesn't agree with your line of thought will make you look like a self-important prick. No shit, eh?

I don't see how he's being condescending. It's good advice.

[pedritolo]

Overall much improved, I think.

Couldn't agree more

[and into]

My biggest concern with such an approach is it means every character should stop by the alter to see what gods it contains. That seems undesirable.

Since the random gods are chosen upon generation you could give a parenthetical list in the messages.

"You see a faded altar (Okawaru, Sif Muna, Xom, The Shining One)"

[chequers]

Another concern: this change entirely removes any downside for using the altar. You couldn't justify any bonus piety.

More importantly, I don't like the approach of giving information about the altar before you elect to use it.

Right now, about 12% of faded altar worshippers go on to quit their game, which is about 5x higher than the normal quit rate. As well as this, all Gods are equally likely, and the difference in quit rate between the most and least quit God is only ~2x. I'd like to reduce the overall quit rate while ensuring all Gods are chosen roughly equally and without disproportionate effect on any one god's quit rate.

[duvessa]

I don't like the idea either but it's absurd to say it removes any downside for using the altar. At best, you still have a 75% chance of getting a god other than the one you want.

[chequers]

If you want any of the four chosen gods, you'd worship at it. If you didn't want one or more, you wouldnt.

[Arrhythmia]

If you didn't want one or more, you wouldnt.

Considering how many people in here have expressed their enjoyment of faded altars, this simply isn't true, at all.

[duvessa]

If you want any of the four chosen gods, you'd worship at it. If you didn't want one or more, you wouldnt.

So you'd choose to worship at a faded altar (Fedhas, Qazlal, Cheibriados, Xom) if you wanted Fedhas?
In almost all cases, the 4-god version of a faded altar still has a 75% chance of weakening your character for most of the rest of the game compared to waiting for the altar for the best god for your character. You can reasonably argue that Crawl's difficulty is so frontloaded that this doesn't matter and you should take it as long as all 4 gods are not Qazlal/Xom/Chei, but even I'm not willing to do that.

Considering how many people in here have expressed their enjoyment of faded altars, this simply isn't true, at all.

Lots of people expressed their enjoyment of sparkling fountains, that didn't make it any less terrible to quaff from them, nor did it make their design any less terrible.

[Arrhythmia]

Lots of people expressed their enjoyment of sparkling fountains, that didn't make it any less terrible to quaff from them, nor did it make their design any less terrible.

Please read my post again, I think you misunderstood it.

[duvessa]

I am fairly confident that when chequers typed "you", they were not referring to Arrythmia, but to a hypothetical player trying to win.

[Arrhythmia]

I am fairly confident that when chequers typed "you", they were not referring to Arrythmia, but to a hypothetical player trying to win.

I think, chequers saying "anyone trying to win wouldn't use this altar", when many people who have posted in this thread both try to win and use a worse version of this altar, is at the least just not being very observant. Pretending that we're not trying to win on your part (here I am actually talking to you, minmay, not a hypothetical player), is very disingenuous, and I would appreciate if you treated us with respect.

[goodcoolguy]

A suggestion along the lines of what and into is saying: Make the altars appear in a vault containing several faded altars, say four but the number could vary. When you try to step onto some particular tile or pray at one of the altars, you get a warning that if you continue, the game will reveal the identities of the altars and trap you inside of the vault until you choose one of them. Obvious restrictions apply of course.

This way you soften the downside of having to take a god the player absolutely doesn't want to take, you retain some reason to give the player a reward for taking the leap of infinite abandon, and you keep the general idea of how the altars work.

also edit:

Pretending that we're not trying to win on your part (here I am actually talking to you, minmay, not a hypothetical player), is very disingenuous, and I would appreciate if you treated us with respect.

Don't do that. There's trying to win and there's trying to win.

[Arrhythmia]

Pretending that we're not trying to win on your part (here I am actually talking to you, minmay, not a hypothetical player), is very disingenuous, and I would appreciate if you treated us with respect.

Don't do that. There's trying to win and there's trying to win.

Fair enough. Trying to score points off a misunderstanding of my post gets me salty.

[jwoodward48ss]

Formicids. Teleportation. Digging. Disintegration. Shatter. LRD. Passwall. OOD. There are so many ways that a physical altar trap could go wrong. Just make it a UI thing?

[edgefigaro]

I like true random faded altars. Perhaps you have to use an ID scroll to get it down to 4 gods?

[Midn8]

For what its worth I take faded altars every game because they are fun. I like to spin the slot machine and let RNGesus guide my way. And removing fun from the game is usually a bad thing.

Obviously I only tale them when I don't have a god.