Redesign Fedhas


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Snake Sneak

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Joined: Tuesday, 7th January 2014, 15:06

Post Tuesday, 1st March 2016, 19:48

Redesign Fedhas

Fedhas is an old god with an awkward, incongruous, and boring ability set. The only person who enjoys playing fedhas is crate. He ranks only above the bastard child of crawl, Elyvilon, in popularity -

13093 recent wins: 1446x Trog, 1439x Okawaru, 1137x The Shining One, 1118x Makhleb, 999x Cheibriados, 945x Vehumet, 828x Ashenzari, 571x Ru, 553x Gozag, 501x Dithmenos, 429x Qazlal, 390x Zin, 336x Lugonu, 317x, 310x Sif Muna, 285x Kikubaaqudgha, 265x Xom, 212x Nemelex Xobeh, 208x Yredelemnul, 184x Jiyva, 177x Beogh, 164x Pakellas, 140x Fedhas, 117x Elyvilon, 11x Hepliaklqana, 11x Ukayaw

A weak character who needs to use his abilities often can't because of piety limitations. And god forbid you don't find enough fruit; no other god gets completely shafted based on bad drops. Though the god is arguably "good", and "the best god for 3 runes", he is frustrating and obtuse to play with, and his popularity reflects that. The concept of "plants" has a huge potential for a cool god and fedhas squanders that. The Summon Forest spell is both more interesting and more fun than the entire concept of the god. Regardless of the theoretical effectiveness of mushroom dancing, it's undeniable that Fedhas could be much more interesting and see more play time if he had a less frustrating set of abilities.
Last edited by Piginabag on Tuesday, 1st March 2016, 19:59, edited 1 time in total.

Sar

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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 1st March 2016, 19:58

Re: Redesign Fedhas

Well, I'm not sure I qualify as a "person", but I do enjoy playing Fedhas!
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Zot Zealot

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Post Tuesday, 1st March 2016, 20:06

Piginabag wrote:The only person who enjoys playing fedhas is crate.

I don't think so.

Checking the number of games: !lg * god=Fedhas s=name

17152 games for * (god=Fedhas): 558x M4edhros, 176x raskol, 162x puissantveil, 154x adamzap, 127x agentgt, 100x Neil, 74x Zalbag, 66x Sharkman1231, 65x nht, 64x Snack, 62x Heidel, 60x Igxfl, 58x Thetao, 58x Horatio, 57x XLukarX, 56x Vidiiot, 55x sdlr, 54x dolemite99, 54x TwoGrow, 54x ProzacElf, 53x Guido, 50x daryashkoh, 49x comborobin, 47x tedric, 47x prolixmagus, 47x 10111993, 47x jrlans, 47x dpeg, 46x Strat, 46x HilariousDeathArtist, 44x Soadreqm, 42x LordSloth, 41x 78291, 40x jeanjacques, 40x TGW, 39x Akett, 39x Rubinko, 38x mopl, 38x yoyo1412, 37x Kaiser, 36x Eli, 36x yobbo, 36x VolteccerJack, 35x Lawman0, 35x Gressup, 34x smajdalf, 34x cerealjynx, 34x urdrd, 34x Paprika, 33x WalkerBoh, 33x Tenaya, 33x Mel, 32x mother3end, 32x crate, 32x johnnyzero, 32x puppykicker, 31x DrPraetor, 31x stickyfingers, 31x M4edh, 31x Basil, 31x joy1999, 30x sanka, 30x Argons, 30x valrus, [...]

Checking the wins: !lg * win god=Fedhas s=name

496 games for * (win god=Fedhas): 22x Basil, 14x joy1999, 12x crate, 10x 78291, 9x Zooty, 8x comborobin, 8x Sharkman1231, 8x Sar, 7x rubinko, 7x Yermak, 6x clouded, 6x jeanjacques, 6x Lasty, 6x DrKe, 6x pointless, 6x Sphara, 6x Snack, 5x Zalbag, 5x simm, 5x Pac, 5x HilariousDeathArtist, 5x Berder, 5x Medar, 4x bart, 4x MorganLeah, 4x Vizer, 4x Vidiiot, 4x Tolias, 4x johnnyzero, 4x ebarrett, 4x M4edhros, 4x zzxc, 3x Infected, 3x MakeMeASandwich, 3x ackack, 3x Blashyrkh, 3x Dynast, 3x nht, 3x dck, 3x MrPlanck, 3x reid, 3x nago, [...]
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Barkeep

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Post Tuesday, 1st March 2016, 20:23

Re: Redesign Fedhas

The things about Fedhas that I find kind of annoying:
  • The list of things that prayer does is kind of nuts, and Fedhas is now the only god that does corpse sacrifice. I'd make the two extra effects (skeletonizing zombies or killing ghouls) just happen some piety-dependent percentage of the time when they come into LOS and turn the corpse sacrifice into an (a)bility.
  • Fedhas is essentially "luring: the god." Most of this is honestly fine to me; oklobs feel limited and powerful and if Crawl didn't have a terrain-effect god we'd have to invent a new one. But Wandering Mushrooms' movement gimmick is almost comically frustrating even if they're still OP and encourage "optimal" tactics. I prefer herding a whole horde of orcs to handling three shrooms, tbh.
  • I hate food, ergo, I hate fruit costs. I'd scrap these and rebalance around piety costs alone, honestly.

Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Tuesday, 1st March 2016, 20:47

Re: Redesign Fedhas

3 wins with fedhas was enough for me to never want to play it again. Not because its boring but because the god is too powerful and makes the game feel so unrewarding. The god has sinergy but aside from the recall spell that makes the run bearable they feel unnecessary. A can shot through stuff? Cool, but i dont want to lose my mushrooms so i better help in melee most of the time... I can blow up my mushrooms? nice, or i can just let them do their thing since they are strong enough and i dont want unecessary penance.

Raising explosive balls are great though, no complaints about that.
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 1st March 2016, 21:55

Re: Redesign Fedhas

I don't really see any big problems with Fedhas personally. Mushrooms have some definite akwardness to them in the time between when you see an enemy and when you fight it but I think that once you're actually in combat they're interesting. They are actually strongly anti-luring in and of themselves, since if you run a long distance away (which is what that topic was complaining about) you lose all your mushrooms if they're not strong enough to kill the enemy on their own (they see the enemy and stop moving, so they get killed). Oklobs are definitely the opposite, though (perhaps they should be temporary). Oklobs also suffer from bad ally AI, since you need to manually use tw or ta to get them to re-target properly much of the time, but that's not strictly a Fedhas problem.

I don't really like the fruit cost for some of his abilities but it was an experiment and unlike several others that crawl has had it works ok. This is more a preference thing than anything. It does make players think finding fruit is important, which is possibly a downside.

I don't really find his abilities incongruous, myself. They share a loose theme of disrupting enemies in combat (shallow water is actually an extremely strong debuff; most people, including myself, do not use rain for this debuff nearly often enough). He was also supposed to be a god designed to aid ranged combat, which sort of works. The main problem there is that it's really unclear which spells Fedhas protects your allies from, so I just avoid the problem entirely by not using spells. I suggest solving this by just preventing all damage to plant allies under Fedhas from the player. It's an unnecessary (small) buff but at least it's clear, unlike the current situation. I think you can't hex through your plants so AM and the like are left in the dust also, though I'm unsure if changing that is a good idea.

I think the lack of popularity stems a lot from him being an in-combat active god without an obvious use case. Some others in this category (Nemelex, Ely, Zin) are also unpopular. In recent games Ely is either less popular than (checking end of game god) or comparably popular to (checking runes obtained while worshipping said god) Fedhas, so it's not a case of old Ely with problems causing this effect. (Nemelex I will admit has problems.)
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 1st March 2016, 22:11

Re: Redesign Fedhas

Sar wrote:Well, I'm not sure I qualify as a "person", but I do enjoy playing Fedhas!

Me too!

(Would have just thanked but that's not possible anymore...)
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Post Wednesday, 2nd March 2016, 09:45

Re: Redesign Fedhas

archaeo wrote:The things about Fedhas that I find kind of annoying:
  • The list of things that prayer does is kind of nuts, and Fedhas is now the only god that does corpse sacrifice. I'd make the two extra effects (skeletonizing zombies or killing ghouls) just happen some piety-dependent percentage of the time when they come into LOS and turn the corpse sacrifice into an (a)bility.
  • Fedhas is essentially "luring: the god." Most of this is honestly fine to me; oklobs feel limited and powerful and if Crawl didn't have a terrain-effect god we'd have to invent a new one. But Wandering Mushrooms' movement gimmick is almost comically frustrating even if they're still OP and encourage "optimal" tactics. I prefer herding a whole horde of orcs to handling three shrooms, tbh.
  • I hate food, ergo, I hate fruit costs. I'd scrap these and rebalance around piety costs alone, honestly.

thanks

Snake Sneak

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Joined: Tuesday, 7th January 2014, 15:06

Post Wednesday, 2nd March 2016, 16:32

Re: Redesign Fedhas

ydeve wrote:
archaeo wrote:The things about Fedhas that I find kind of annoying:
  • The list of things that prayer does is kind of nuts, and Fedhas is now the only god that does corpse sacrifice. I'd make the two extra effects (skeletonizing zombies or killing ghouls) just happen some piety-dependent percentage of the time when they come into LOS and turn the corpse sacrifice into an (a)bility.
  • Fedhas is essentially "luring: the god." Most of this is honestly fine to me; oklobs feel limited and powerful and if Crawl didn't have a terrain-effect god we'd have to invent a new one. But Wandering Mushrooms' movement gimmick is almost comically frustrating even if they're still OP and encourage "optimal" tactics. I prefer herding a whole horde of orcs to handling three shrooms, tbh.
  • I hate food, ergo, I hate fruit costs. I'd scrap these and rebalance around piety costs alone, honestly.

thanks


me too thanks

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