Change corpse-sacrifice accepting gods to work like Fedhas

[tabstorm]

Currently if you worship gods like Trog, Okawaru, Makhleb, Lugonu, and anyone else I forgot, you have to manually sacrifice each corpse one at a time if you want to gain the piety bonus from doing so. However with Fedhas you need only hit p once for each encounter. Personally I find it a little annoying to hit opopopopopopopop when just one use of 'p' should do. Maybe it's really important for some tactical reason to not allow these gods to sacrifice all corpses onscreen in one turn, I don't know.

[dck]

Autosac exists and pretending it does not isn't a good reason to make Fedhas' ability to destroy all corpses in sight (which can be varyingly relevant to survival in a number of situations) be common to all gods that accept sacrifices.
Furthermore this just leads down the slippery slope of questioning why one has to press "p" at all instead of having the god in question just give a touch more piety from killing. It is true a system of sacrifices that is more involved than crawl's current version could be interesting, but it is also true that the current is a lot better than nothing at all, which is ultimately what this way of addressing the issue would lead to (this is because flavor's value is not zero and what the game tells players about what they are doing is important).

[tabstorm]

I would rather sac-ing not even be a thing at all personally, but while we have it in existence I personally think it's better to not require the player to modify their game just to not have to hit opopopopop, unless it's really meant to be a perk for Fedhas users as opposed to other gods that accept sacrifices (then fine don't change it).

[KoboldLord]

If setting a massive pile of the corpses of my enemies on fire is wrong, I'm not sure I really I want to be right. Consecrating a battle with a massive pyre feels good, and is easily worth a single key-press. On the other hand, the fun wears thin if I have to repeat it a dozen times per battle. Fedhas' mechanic for corpse sacrifice retains all the desired flavor while eliminating the minor mechanical annoyance from repetition. I don't see a down side. The only down side I've heard of is where people want to go farther by eliminating corpse sacrifice entirely, and are concerned that a partial fix might prevent their preferred fix.

[archaeo]

slippery slope

c'mon dckman, you can't say "just turn on autosac" and the next moment turn around and decry sacrifice simplification as some kind of slippery slope toward a flavorless and empty crawl.

That said, I am basically with tabstorm and, I guess, against flavor here; I don't think the flavor of corpse sac'ing justifies the number of times I have to press "p" during a game. It's automatic to me, of course, but I don't think ramming my fingers against o and p in a repeated and frenzied attempt to get on with the game is really that desirable.

[savageorange]

Yes. autosacing is not fun. It's just less tedious than manually sacing.

[Sar]

While I do like flavor, I just don't feel like regular corpse saccing is very flavorful. Yeah, there are messages about corpses burning occasionally but they don't even leave flame clouds! When I think about flavorful saccing mechanics, I think about Fedhas, yes - you get those cool shrooms, you can sacc some undead, and the shrooms actually serve a very important purpose. Trog's book burning is a pretty good example too.

[dck]

I remember that before I sank hour after hour into the game saccin' particular foes that'd given me a fair share of trouble felt just as right as the useless messages you get from praying on your god's altar when you stumble upon one, not only that but it would give a degree of closure to the encounter. I've so far seen eight friends of mine pick up crawl irl and I've observed the things that stuck with them the most were stories about how they nearly fucked up against X tough dude or unique, survived on desperate measures and then either righteously ate their foe's heart or sacrificed him to their god. Yes this is just silly stuff and changes may be done seemingly inconsequentially, but further remove hooks like these that make the game stand out in the mind of the new player and step by step one may be faced with an alarmingly low number of staying new players.

For the initiated player autosac gets rid of the tedious part of sacrificing every rat while still letting the player sac manually the big things he'd feel are proper offerings, and in the case of the player who obsessively churns out orbs like it's going out of style it can be just used for everything ever. Flavor and silly charm don't last forever (and aren't meant to) and I don't see how anyone who has played the game literally for months could be expected to still care about the finer touches of it. I also don't see why changes that in practice do nothing or very little but harm flavor significantly should be done in the name of those players.

Making it all behave like fedhas' does nothing to alleviate the real perceived problem here, which is that saccin' is useless and should not exist, because what's suggested here is just that part of the saccin' steps are removed; it simultaneously removes involvement from manual saccin' as well as making fedhas' saccin' a lot less unique. And I do mean that it removes involvement because in practice fedhas' only works because it does something, one hits "p" and all kinds of spectacular stuff happen that make it look like the god actually cares, if all gods are changed so that standing on a battlefield and hitting p eats all the corpses and does nothing in return then that's going to feel like shit and not going to convey any sort of message.

Fedhas' actually has pretty well crafted flavor in his saccin' method because it synergizes with getting rid of the undead whom the god hates. Praying to fedhas literally disarms any spell user with anidead, simulacrum or whatever in his book and I won't pretend this hasn't been just as situationally useful and cool as praying ghouls away; yes of course anided and the rest aren't normally the biggest threats of those enemies but that's not the point, the point is this particular type of flavorful sacrificing can be used to remove potential threats which the god itself particularly dislikes.
Once Makhleb, trog, choko and the whole pack of them become able to do exactly the same thing except with no tactical cost at all the impact of dealing with enemies that way is completely lost, and for what? Apparently so that one may speedrun without wasting turns by walking over to corpses and pressing "p", because that's from my understanding the only reason one who believes saccin' should not exist would champion this sort of change to the system instead of outright removal or pretend autosac is not there.

Well that doesn't seem serious to me. As I said before I would love for different gods to actually have interesting things in their sacrificing methods that work with their flavor just the way it happens to fedhas' but I understand this would be a difficult task for some gods and that it is unlikely to happen at all (just like a god with fedhas' type sacrifices, fungi and whatnot would never make it in today). In my eyes the next best thing is not to eradicate what distinction there is and make saccin' even blander for an extremely corner case "interface improvement" that is just a band-aid for the perceived proper solution (no saccin' at all).

[Wahaha]

I agree with dck that sacrificing the corpse of a strong enemy feels satisfying, probably more for new players. I also agree that since the autosac option exists there's no problem with single sacrifices. But it is likely that a portion of players aren't really aware that options exist or that the autosac option exists. I think most new players don't know that options exist until they learn about them from someone else either by seeing them in action or someone telling them to use some option. So maybe if there was something within the game to increase awareness of the options file it would help people learn about autosac. The main menu has a line about the options file but frankly I think most people ignore that. Similarly I think many people ignore the options item in the Help menu, and I wonder how many people look at that menu in the first place (I've looked at it for the first time just now). Maybe the Main menu could have an Options item that opens the options file in the user's default text editor.

A compromise between saccing flavor and easiness could be the following:
At 0-1* piety make Trog sac a single pile of corpses like it does now.
At 2-6* progressively increase the corpse sacrifice radius to sac corpses around the player. Going from adjacent to at least 5 tiles radius at 6*, could simply be full screen too. The player still has to pray on top of a corpse to trigger the aoe sac.

I think removing saccing is a bad idea because it's a big loss of flavor. As much as gameplay is important, Crawl benefits a lot from flavor as a game.

[Lasty]

If the Fedhas-style sacrifice gives messages for (at least) particularly impressive corpses, it would keep that flavor intact. You still get to stand over your defeated foe and sacrifice their corpse, but you don't have to irritate all us jaded pros at the same time.

[duvessa]

I miss praying before every kill, it was so flavourful.

[Zalbag]

As a player who just started in Feb this year, I still feel the small touch of flavor stuff is really important, since overall game is more technical than flavorful. Gods like Fedhas and Beogh with heavy crawl-specific flavor are my favorite to play by far. Also, Fedhas' mushroom prayer has all kinds of tactical advantages over solo-sacrifices (mentioned earlier). (I also love the flavor of Chei and Nemelex, even if I can't play well with 'em) For speedruners, I would think that saccin' every corpse would actually be a bad idea, especially Okawaru followers who don't get much piety for weak corpses. Maybe it's my inexperience, but I usually don't take the time to sac everything when I'm Troggin or Makhlebin' because I seem to be accumulating enough piety fast enough just by killing stuff. But when I worship Beogh, I do make sure to bless the corpse of every fallen orc, especially my fallen followers (may they shed much blood in the battles that come past death)
It seems to me you could easily adjust the piety bonus for sacrifices vs kills as a compromise - if you have low piety, saccin' is weighted more, as you have lots of piety, killing is weighted more - flavor wise, Trog doesn't require his most devoted berserkers to sacrifice corpses, because it slows down their killing, but new followers must prove themselves as much as possible! This would make a slight mod to your should-I-sac-it-or-eat-it choices if you berserk a lot and end up hungry, so maybe Trog isn't the best example, but it would work fine with Okawaru and Makhleb

some version of Wahaha's compromise could work well, too - I like the idea that you have to pray on top of a corpse to trigger it, this still holds the flavor of a war/violence/destruction god

A compromise between saccing flavor and easiness could be the following:
At 0-1* piety make Trog sac a single pile of corpses like it does now.
At 2-6* progressively increase the corpse sacrifice radius to sac corpses around the player. Going from adjacent to at least 5 tiles radius at 6*, could simply be full screen too. The player still has to pray on top of a corpse to trigger the aoe sac.

[grisamentum]

Currently if you worship gods like Trog, Okawaru, Makhleb, Lugonu, and anyone else I forgot, you have to manually sacrifice each corpse one at a time if you want to gain the piety bonus from doing so. However with Fedhas you need only hit p once for each encounter. Personally I find it a little annoying to hit opopopopopopopop when just one use of 'p' should do. Maybe it's really important for some tactical reason to not allow these gods to sacrifice all corpses onscreen in one turn, I don't know.

I think even better would be to change a few gods away from corpse sacrifice and towards more flavorful means of generating piety. Like Trog worshipers getting bonus piety for killing while berserking and more Okawaru piety for killing while in high tension.

Of course the other issue here is the food timer, and whatever's going to happen with corpses in the future.

[Sandman25]

I think even better would be to change a few gods away from corpse sacrifice and towards more flavorful means of generating piety. Like Trog worshipers getting bonus piety for killing while berserking and more Okawaru piety for killing while in high tension.

Of course the other issue here is the food timer, and whatever's going to happen with corpses in the future.

Okawaru does get more piety for sacrificing dangerous bodies and killing dangerous monsters. (I even got two gifts from sacrificing a single body once).
The suggested change for Trog is a huge nerf. Berserking just for increased piety gain is a bad thing IMHO.

[grisamentum]

Okawaru does get more piety for sacrificing dangerous bodies and killing dangerous monsters. (I even got two gifts from sacrificing a single body once).

Obviously. But (1) the point is to remove/reduce the tedious "opopopopopo" after a big battle, as tabstorm mentioned, and to make sacrificing corpses less ubiquitous.

And (2) that's not the same thing. High tension depends on having more hostile monsters in LOS (or being at low HP yourself), not just killing difficult things.

The suggested change for Trog is a huge nerf. Berserking just for increased piety gain is a bad thing IMHO.

What, Trog couldn't handle a nerf? And wouldn't it depend on how much piety?

But again, it depends on what happens to corpses and food clocks. I don't know if a chunkless branch is still being worked on (seems like it; https://crawl.develz.org/wiki/doku.php? ... 0.16_plans ), but it seems that if you get rid of chunk eating for most species, then corpse sacrificing for piety just becomes an automatic non-choice for most species when worshiping a god who wants sacrificed corpses.

[Sandman25]

For (1) there is an easy way to avoid opop, set "autosacrifice_before_explore" to true (or something like that). I press "o" and all coprses are automatically sacrificed.
For (2) that would encourage to gather "not so dangerous" monsters in LoS for fighting them. Like luring several Ettins from different corners of the level to kill them in a corridor one after another.
For Trog the problem is not nerf itself but violating principle "optimal play should not be tedious/stupid" (or something like that). and here "gaining more piety" is optimal while putting yourself in danger by unnecessary berserking is stupid and waiting for Exhausted status to end is tedious.

[grisamentum]

For (1) there is an easy way to avoid opop, set "autosacrifice_before_explore" to true (or something like that). I press "o" and all coprses are automatically sacrificed.
For (2) that would encourage to gather "not so dangerous" monsters in LoS for fighting them. Like luring several Ettins from different corners of the level to kill them in a corridor one after another.

Obviously shift-o "gather not so dangerous monsters."

More seriously, autosac just hides the problem. It shouldn't exist in the first place, as half a dozen other people in this thread already said.

As for (2), I don't think so. I thought tension didn't apply to monsters who couldn't reach the player. Maybe my understanding is incorrect, but a bunch of ettins down a corridor wouldn't/shouldn't add any tension. Plus that would be a relatively small amount of tension compared to how much you could get in the open for extra piety.

For Trog the problem is not nerf itself but violating principle "optimal play should not be tedious/stupid" (or something like that).

How would berserking for extra piety be either tedious or stupid? It's a tradeoff of food for piety that uses the same number of keystrokes as autosac. It's certainly a more interesting decision than autosaccing corpses after a fight. I mean cmon: we are comparing it to something so boring that the answer is "it's ok, the game can automate that part for you."

[XuaXua]

Easy(?) fix:

Trog: Remove sac from Trog. Replace with chance piety from attacks, definite piety from kills, but only while berserking. Alternately, replace sac with Fedhas sac; all corpses turn into 1 aut duration, monster-size-level flames.
Lugonu: Remove sac from Lugonu. Replace with chance piety from attacks, definite piety from kills, while using a distortion weapon. "The orc screams a death knell as Lugonu dissipates your sacrifice."
Makhleb: Replace Makhleb sac with Fedhas auto-sec; all bodies transform into explosions of blood for immediate square; check for low-duration blindness or poisoning, depending. Judicious use of blood splatter.
Okawaru: Leave sac on Okawaru; makes Oka unique. (translation: I can't think of a good one for Oka).

[Sandman25]

Devs say tension is designed for Xom only and should not (and cannot) be used for any other goal so our conversation is meaningless here.
Berserking makes you slow and voluntarily getting slow status is stupid.
Even with automation there is still space for decision. For example, yesterday I spectated a top player who was starving as Ko of Okawaru while sacrificing all corpses because he needed a good weapon. At the same time my Ko's are usually at least full no matter whether they need a weapon or not.

[grisamentum]

Devs say tension is designed for Xom only and should not (and cannot) be used for any other goal so our conversation is meaningless here.

I'm calling bullshit on this because tension is already used by the Demon Guardian mutation. There is no reason it couldn't be used by something else.

Berserking makes you slow and voluntarily getting slow status is stupid.

So... you should never berserk? I'm sorry but what?

We're not even talking about the general piety from killing. We're talking about the bonus piety from sacrificing corpses. You wouldn't be forced to berserk for piety, but only if you wanted a weapon faster.

Even with automation there is still space for decision. For example, yesterday I spectated a top player who was starving as Ko of Okawaru while sacrificing all corpses because he needed a good weapon. At the same time my Ko's are usually at least full no matter whether they need a weapon or not.

But again, if most races can't eat chunks, then that decision wouldn't exist anymore - except, as I have been trying to explain, if you had bonus Trog piety while berserking.

[Sandman25]

Berserking makes you slow and voluntarily getting slow status is stupid.

So... you should never berserk? I'm sorry but what?

Probably I should have repeated words from previous messages here to be more clear. Voluntarily AND unnecessarily. How do you like berserking as XL 20 character to kill a rat? Especially with some dangerous ranged monsters entering into LoS while/after berserk ends? Isn't it stupid?

[grisamentum]

Berserking makes you slow and voluntarily getting slow status is stupid.

So... you should never berserk? I'm sorry but what?

Probably I should have repeated words from previous messages here to be more clear. Voluntarily AND unnecessarily. How do you like berserking as XL 20 character to kill a rat? Especially with some dangerous ranged monsters entering into LoS while/after berserk ends? Isn't it stupid?

Of course it is stupid, which is why you would not berserk to kill every little rat you came across. It wouldn't even be viable, since berserking has a significant food cost.

[Brannock]

Maybe it's really important for some tactical reason to not allow these gods to sacrifice all corpses onscreen in one turn, I don't know.

Animate Dead, Twisted Resurrection, Simulacrum.

[Sar]

only if you wanted a weapon faster

which is "always"

[grisamentum]

only if you wanted a weapon faster

which is "always"

But you still wouldn't always do it, since it be wouldn't safe, nor could you afford the food hit.

[and into]

I'm all for good flavor, but really one has to consider all the game play angles first, then fit flavor to what works best there. The best flavor is that which supports and organically rationalizes good game design.

It isn't just "flavor" that Fedhas despises certain specific necromancy spells that mess around with corpses. The flavor rationale fits, but it isn't just there for that reason. Rather, a god that gives piety for sacrificing and which sacrifices ALL corpses in LOS would have terrible game play if you worshiped it on a character with spells like animate dead, twisted resurrection, corpse rot: these spells also affect all corpses in LOS. If you wanted to raise up some decent zombies and sac the rest, you'd have to do awkward things like move around such that only some corpses are in LOS, then cast/pray, then move again to take care of the rest. So instead Fedhas hates those spells, so going with Fedhas means forgoing those spells that would have bad interaction with that god. Then some good flavor was written around this good design.

So mass sacrificing would work for Trog, who hates if you cast any magic (so no problem there), but for Makhleb or Oka or Lugonu or Nem you'd have a problem. So whatever change you introduce for those gods should probably not involve mass sacrificing. Also as for mass sacrificing causing huge flames, Trog already has that going on with spell books anyway so it is redundant with an existing mechanic, and Trog really doesn't need a buff, does he?

Having a strong tactical tool like berserk also serve as a way to increase piety is a bad idea but for different reasons, especially since the strength of berserk as a tactical tool is balanced by its long cooldown and slow status.

Maybe the gods who do single-space sacrifices should be changed, but in the meantime if an auto-sac option could simply be given in game via the ^ menu, in addition to permanently setting it via the init file, that would practically resolve the issue for the moment... (I have zero coding experience, not even a passing familiarity with the most basic stuff, and so I played Crawl for a while—long after the fun of the flavor of corpse saccing had lost its appeal—before I started messing about with package contents. That's why I'd suggest having an in-game option, the default for which you could set in the init file.)

[jejorda2]

What if Oka typically did not accept sacrifices, but then, when ready to gift, asked for a sacrifice to demonstrate the player's worth. Better corpse -> better gift. The offer would time out relatively quickly, so you have to decide whether to use the best corpse that is lying around or go hunt something better. Use rules kind of like Yred enslavement to decrease scumming.

[Lasty]

Honestly, removing corpse sacrifice w/o replacement for Trog, Makhleb, and Lugonu would be absolutely fine. It removes the "interesting decision" of whether to use up some of your infinite permafood in exchange for piety (protip: do that), but that's no real loss. The same is probably true for Okawaru, but it's possible that Okawaru would need to be slightly more willing to give piety on kills to avoid weakening the god.

For those who enjoy desecration, you can still chop and each corpses of your foes; if the corpse reduction is interesting (I don't think it particularly is), those gods can randomly claim the bodies of some of your victims.

[XuaXua]

Also as for mass sacrificing causing huge flames, Trog already has that going on with spell books anyway so it is redundant with an existing mechanic, and Trog really doesn't need a buff, does he?

I just threw that out there as an alternate idea in the same line as the suggestion, completely based on the textual description of what exactly happens every time you sacrifice to Trog. Also we can no longer move corpses...

[nicolae]

It isn't just "flavor" that Fedhas despises certain specific necromancy spells that mess around with corpses. The flavor rationale fits, but it isn't just there for that reason. Rather, a god that gives piety for sacrificing and which sacrifices ALL corpses in LOS would have terrible game play if you worshiped it on a character with spells like animate dead, twisted resurrection, corpse rot: these spells also affect all corpses in LOS. If you wanted to raise up some decent zombies and sac the rest, you'd have to do awkward things like move around such that only some corpses are in LOS, then cast/pray, then move again to take care of the rest. So instead Fedhas hates those spells, so going with Fedhas means forgoing those spells that would have bad interaction with that god. Then some good flavor was written around this good design.

Whoever wrote the flavor did a pretty good job of fitting it around the design -- I had no idea until now that Fedhas' hate of corpse-hating necromancy was originally a design consideration. Neat!

[and into]

Whoever wrote the flavor did a pretty good job of fitting it around the design -- I had no idea until now that Fedhas' hate of corpse-hating necromancy was originally a design consideration. Neat!

I wasn't involved in the design or anything, but I imagine that was the case. At the very least, there are compelling design reasons behind Fedhas not liking animate dead/etc. I suspect this was realized and Fedhas's dislikes and flavor were based around that, but I don't know if that is literally true and how it went down. It doesn't alter the basic point, either way, which is that any god which does mass sacrifice will be liable to interact poorly with spells that affect all corpses in LOS.

[Bloax]

Perhaps burning corpses should actually produce a cloud of smoke, and a big one for valuable (bursts into flames!) corpses.