Remove Piety Decay

[amaril]

Piety decay should be removed and if deemed necessary replaced by slightly higher piety costs. Here's why:

1) Not all gods have piety decay, and for the gods that do piety matters to varying degrees. So: piety decay is an insufficient anti-scumming mechanic. It can easily be side stepped. If an anti-scumming mechanic is needed (in a game like dcss with enormous persistent levels it is needed) it should be consistent across characters and not side-steppable.

If piety decay doesn't make sense as an anti-scumming mechanic, why do gods have varying degrees of it? As far as I can tell, the answer is 'differentiation.' It allows Uskayaw (who is a mess) to function, and causes some gods to encourage more aggressive play than others by penalizing slow play with a (minimal) cost to consumable/passive abilities. However, the *main reason* piety decay should go away is that:

2) In practice, its main effect is to punish auto explore.

So, in sum: if the game decides that some play is scummy and should be penalized or prevented entirely, it should be consistent about it. Although piety decay also serves to differentiate gods by varying the amount of 'scummy play' you are allotted, it does a bad job of that and ultimately discourages people from using the game's best convenience feature.

Why is piety decay different from food or a doom clock in this regard? Because piety decay is a gradient penalty for slow play, whereas other anti-scumming measures are binary. It is better to kill the player outright for breaking the rules than it is to penalize their resources in a minimal way over time, which results in a stupid CBA in which you have to weigh the cost of playing excruciatingly safely (or autoexploring) vs ~1 piety many many times throughout the game. The food clock doesn't punish autoexplore because it gives you more than ample time to autoexplore every level. If you are not actually scumming, you should not die of starvation and will face no negative effects due to having less food.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I wanted to thank OP but I won't because I don't want devs to add piety to Gozag like they did to Chei and Fedhas

[crawlnoob]

Ru should have piety decay. You would need to keep sacrificing in order to keep your powers. If you dally too long, you might be a cripple by the time you make it to Zot. What a clock!

[amaril]

I don't want devs to add piety to Gozag like they did to Chei and Fedhas

This is not the solution. Piety decay is not a check on slow play because it can be circumvented (by playing dg or worshiping a god w/o important piety costs like hepl). If punishing slow play is not the intent of piety decay and differentiation is, it doesn't do a good job of that either because the greater the rate of decay the more severely it punishes commonly used convenience features (resting to full hp/autoexplore) which regardless of the rate of decay are penalized more harshly than defensive tactical play.

[bel]

However, the *main reason* piety decay should go away is that:

2) In practice, its main effect is to punish auto explore.

Your complaint seems incoherent to me (or maybe I didn't understand your post). On the one hand you are worried about saving 1 piety, so perhaps you have in mind some sort of "optimal play". On the other hand, you talk about not being able to use autoexplore (which is never "optimal"). If you are so worried about 1 piety making a difference, explore manually. Or you can forget about trivial piety losses and use autoexplore.

[VeryAngryFelid]

I don't want devs to add piety to Gozag like they did to Chei and Fedhas

This is not the solution. Piety decay is not a check on slow play because it can be circumvented (by playing dg or worshiping a god w/o important piety costs like hepl). If punishing slow play is not the intent of piety decay and differentiation is, it doesn't do a good job of that either because the greater the rate of decay the more severely it punishes commonly used convenience features (resting to full hp/autoexplore) which regardless of the rate of decay are penalized more harshly than defensive tactical play.

I agree with you yet devs use piety decay as clock. Othewise they would just increase piety costs and remove piety decay. I haven't played Chei since it has piety decay and am not going to. What a great god was ruined

[Plantissue]

I agree. If monsters are not to spawn after level generation, then there is no reason for piety decay. Reduce rate of piety gain to compensate.

[Stonar]

I agree. If monsters are not to spawn after level generation, then there is no reason for piety decay. Reduce rate of piety gain to compensate.

This was the argument I expected the OP to make, and the one I agree with, personally. With monster spawning gone, are there any gods that can be scummed beyond the natural limit of "killing everything on/exploring the level?"

[njvack]

I haven't played Chei since it has piety decay and am not going to. What a great god was ruined

Chei has piety decay now? That... that makes very little thematic sense.

[charlatan]

I haven't played Chei since it has piety decay and am not going to. What a great god was ruined

Chei has piety decay now? That... that makes very little thematic sense.

He's had piety decay for well over a year. It stinks, and given his slow movement autoexplore is just so wasteful for him. Bleh.

[njvack]

And *not* using autoexplore with Chei is a good way to accidentally move with a monster onscreen :/

[PlatinumSpider]

And *not* using autoexplore with Chei is a good way to accidentally move with a monster onscreen :/

I almost always shift+move with chei for this reason.

[Majang]

I play Chei a lot, and I use autoexplore a lot. Piety decay hardly bothers me. I wouldn't mind if it were not a thing, but really, all this is a non-issue.