Which gods would you remove?

[Sandman25]

Which gods would you remove given a chance? You can select up to 3 gods if you like.

[BabyRage]

Where is Fedhas?

[Sandman25]

Polls are limited to 10 options, I selected those based on my opinion, sorry.

[nago]

Everything new except Ru

[Hellmonk]

All of them except Fedhas.

[BabyRage]

You can't remove Zin, our true and only god!

[Sandman25]

Everything new except Ru

Sorry, I am not clear what you mean as new here, new in 0.18? That includes just Qazlal, right?

[vergil]

Ash, Beogh, Ely, Yred, Zin, Fedhas and especially, especially - Trog.

[Doesnt]

none of them. god are about the easiest things in the game to ignore if you don't like 'em

[nago]

Everything new except Ru

Sorry, I am not clear what you mean as new here, new in 0.18? That includes just Qazlal, right?

Qzlol, Gozag, the new ones' in trunk, Pakellas (God bless you Chris Campbell). Ru is good for me. Dith would be okay if fire conduit is axed.

I missed something else? Oh yeah between older ones, maybe also Ash could be forgotten again, Beogh go out with his specism and Nemelex could be put out of his misery after all the nerf and redo he suffered (I would probably miss the latter but I can't see any other way).

[duvessa]

Qazlal's concept is fine, he just needs a less horrible conduct and no cloud spam. Chei seriously just needs to lose the no haste/speed brand/qblades conduct and he will be more or less ok design-wise.

Ash, Beogh, and Yred all revolve around mechanics that should not exist at their base (curses, allies) so I definitely think they should be removed. Ely, Jiyva, and Nemelex have nearly the same problem but I think you could save Ely by removing pacification. Jiyva is so scattered that it's completely unclear what the god is even supposed to be doing, and in practice it's really bad because item eating cannot coexist with exploration and Crawl's inventory system without making the game extremely annoying. Nemelex can theoretically be fixed (crate has explained this) but I don't think it's worth the effort.

Gozag's effects and abilities are all horribly designed except for potion petition, but you could replace them.

Recite is possibly the most obtuse player ability in the game, and donation/tithing is a really bad idea with even worse implementation (make sure to lure orcs out of Orc so you get more piety from their gold!), but the rest of Zin is fine. Imprison is exactly what an active god ability should be.



Hepliaklqana, Fedhas, Pakellas, Xom, Vehumet, TSO, Kiku, and the current implementations of Uskayaw and Sif all have much more serious design problems than Qazlal, Chei, or even Zin.

[Sandman25]

Fedhas, TSO, Kiku [...] have much more serious design problems

Could you elaborate regarding those gods?

[duvessa]

Hepliaklqana, Fedhas, Xom, TSO, Kiku: allies

Fedhas: abilities are tied to an item (fruit) whose distribution is horribly unbalanced, wandering mushrooms are blatantly the most overpowered god ability in the game and both mushrooms and oklobs lead to excessive luring, uses corpse sacrifices which are long known to be awful, reproduction is really bad gameplay but luckily it's useless anyway, it's unclear which things will hurt your plants and which won't (you can fire storm a plant fine, but not refrigerate it)

Hepliaklqana: in addition to the general problems with summonings, the choices you're given are basically fake

Xom: just a mess, and any criticism or attempt at actual improvement gets dismissed with special pleading

TSO: divine shield existing is pointless, pretty much entirely based around angel summons and beating two specific monster holinesses, neither of which are good mechanics

Kiku, Vehumet: extremely overspecialised, spoilery gifting mechanics, Vehumet removing old gifts is horrible. The terrible balance of both gods is fixable but the overspecialisation is not.

Pakellas: this has been explained enough times and even devs want to remove pakellas so I'm not interested in repeating it

Uskayaw: the piety gain mechanic is easily the worst in the game by far right now, despite there still being a god with corpse sacrifices. For example, if you sticky flame an ogre and press 's' until it dies you get no piety, but if you sticky flame an ogre and throw bread rations at the floor until it dies you get lots of piety. The good news is that Uskayaw's dislike of movement and waiting is not remotely useful for anything, so all you need to do is remove it and the god will be greatly improved, but there seems to be some politics I'm not aware of because this hasn't happened despite how transparently awful it is.
There's still a problem with it being unclear how much piety you will actually gain from an action, but every god has that problem, it's just worse with Uskayaw because piety is so important.

Sif: divine energy is obtuse and does not meaningfully differ from a max MP bonus, it is honestly such a bad mechanic that it ruins the god's design on its own. Channel magic is okay, a design improvement over channeling overall. If you get rid of divine energy, revert the piety gain change (all it does is make piety gain more complicated), and move channel magic or book gifts to 1* so the god is actually useful, I think Sif will be very good.

[and into]

Voted Beogh and Yred, there are definitely problems with some of the others listed (and plenty of the unlisted gods).

However, of the ones listed, I think Beogh should just be removed, Yred should be removed or else so radically changed (away from "god of permanent allies") that it is close to being a different god with the same name.


On a more positive note, here's an off-the-cuff sketch of how to radically change Yred away from "permanent allies":

Stochastic reaping: Every enemy you kill sometimes generates skeleton, zombie, or spectral dude. Chance, strength of ally scales with piety.

Recall: Retained as ability, in case you want to reposition your slow minions around you. Free ability.

Pain mirror, drain life work as they currently do.

Enslave soul --> "Project Soul," create a temporary clone of yourself to help you kick ass, clone is weakened version of you but becomes more accurate clone as your invocations skill goes up. Requires some % of current HP to activate, perhaps.

Undead pet gifts --> active ability "Netherworld Gate," based on invocations skill. Over time gates in undead allies, starting with some weaker stuff, scaling up to stronger undead, scales with invocations. Activating the gate causes a "brush with death" that exhausts and rots your HP or something, I dunno.


Even more radically: With above Yred you could migrate other interesting necromancy effects to Kiku as active abilities, maybe reflavor one or two as other spell types, and then just remove necromancy spell school from game entirely.
Could reflavor Yred and Kiku as brother deities who drew scorn from the good gods when they began dabbling in evil necromantic powers (easy to believe the same crazy mother named them)

[Sandman25]

But Necromancy is fun, lot's of unique spells like Death's Door and Necromutation

[and into]

But Necromancy is fun, lot's of unique spells like Death's Door and Necromutation

Right, let's move the fun stuff to gods/other spell schools, at which point necromancy becomes redundant.

Permanent allies cause a lot of problems. Maybe Hep can be reconfigured somehow into a viable "(single) pet-giving" god... somehow. I don't know how. Maybe not. But multiple permanent allies is just downright painful in Crawl.

There are already ways to achieve temporary ally summoning in Crawl (piety-consuming god abilities, consumables, XP-recharging evoked items) that make more sense as approaches to "summoning" than spells do. Most spells that create allies are problematic. Changes to summoning and necromancy school have helped a lot, but the changes haven't completely fixed some underlying issues (of which I am sure you are aware).

[vergil]

But Necromancy is fun, lot's of unique spells like Death's Door and Necromutation

That's like the most opposite things of fun I've ever heard. Necromutation is a mess. DDoor is a mess. You've forgot to mention Revivification.
Yeah, you can call it "unique". I'd rather say - OP for no good reason. Torment immunity and immortality.
All of this a part of one school, and every character in extended MUST have them, basically training Necromancy only for those.

There's no obvious problems with those of course. Necromancy is fun.

[Sandman25]

That's like the most opposite things of fun I've ever heard.

Fun is subjective
I have fun feeling invincible with the latter and at unusual level of danger when the former expires.

[Shard1697]

cut ely and nemelex or drastically rework them. beogh probably deserves it too, but some part of me likes playing beogh and building up the SWAT team of orc warlords with polearms. I don't care about anything else besides relatively minor tweaks and changes.

But Necromancy is fun, lot's of unique spells like Death's Door and Necromutation

That's like the most opposite things of fun I've ever heard.

Death's Door is really fun, though! It has a great mix of power and risk, where you feel(naturally) invincible watching enemy attacks do nothing at all, but in the back of your mind knowing that before too long it will run out and you will have almost no HP.

[Shtopit]

Go Chei, go go go!

[Arrhythmia]

i tried to anti-vote for chei but couldn't see the button for that. could you please fix this napkin?

[Shard1697]

oh also please please just cut Dith's flame conduct it's so bad and the rest of the god is quite good

[Sprucery]

I couldn't vote without selecting any gods. I wouldn't remove any of them, everything can be fixed that needs fixing imo.

[Lasty]

Uskayaw: the piety gain mechanic is easily the worst in the game by far right now, despite there still being a god with corpse sacrifices. For example, if you sticky flame an ogre and press 's' until it dies you get no piety, but if you sticky flame an ogre and throw bread rations at the floor until it dies you get lots of piety.

I've been okay with the silliness of the condition you're listing because it's really hard to productively game the system. The current piety system requires that 1) you deal damage in the time since your last action and 2) that you did an action that could result in dealing damage since your last action. So yeah, you can sticky flame an enemy and then throw bread at the ground or attack a wall, but there really isn't a case where you are better off doing that than actually trying to hurt the monster that's on fire instead. Poison could make this situation more abusable -- poison a monster heavily, teleport away, attack a wall -- but it doesn't count in any case.

So yeah, it's goofy, but it works pretty well in practice. I'm definitely open to tightening up the loopholes, but it's pretty hard given how much freedom crawlers have to take meaningless actions, and I've been short on dev time lately. A god of dance shouldn't reward sitting around while you watch things sit in freezing clouds, so I think it significantly contributes to the feel of the god to force the player to participate in combat in some way, but that means that it's hard to judge correctly when to award piety for things like casting freezing cloud without using silly rules like the one we have now.

The good news is that Uskayaw's dislike of movement and waiting is not remotely useful for anything, so all you need to do is remove it and the god will be greatly improved.

I'm not sure what you're proposing here. Could you elaborate?

[Sar]

every character in extended MUST have them, basically training Necromancy only for those

[Sandman25]

every character in extended MUST have them, basically training Necromancy only for those

some image

Well, not every character but I remember many characters who started training Necromancy just when I decided that I will go for 15 runes.
As Arrhythmia wrote in another thread, training skills above 20 is generally a mistake so I believe it is often a good idea to get level 8 Necromancy spells instead of getting +3 AC or 3rd way of killing monsters.

[ximxim]

every character in extended MUST have them, basically training Necromancy only for those

Replace "extended" with (mega) zigs maybe, and the point stands?

As for gods, I'd propose to merge the good stuff from Ash and Chei into one god. Maybe same thing with Nemelex and Xom. Agree with what others have said above about permanent ally gods.

[Dungeoneer]

where is none?

EDIT: yall motherfuckers need jesus

[Sandman25]

Polls are limited to 10 options, I selected those based on my opinion, sorry.

[infinitevox]

I would add more >.>

[vergil]

every character in extended MUST have them, basically training Necromancy only for those

Replace "extended" with (mega) zigs maybe, and the point stands?

Yep, that's exactly what I was trying to say.

[Sar]

balancing anything using mega-zigs as a measuring stick is pretty much the worst idea ever

[duvessa]

The good news is that Uskayaw's dislike of movement and waiting is not remotely useful for anything, so all you need to do is remove it and the god will be greatly improved.

I'm not sure what you're proposing here. Could you elaborate?

Remove USKAYAW_DID_DANCE_ACTION. I know you have a personal dislike of DoT effects, and so do I, but this extremely selective attempt at nerfing them is not a good idea and it doesn't even work, since, as you yourself admitted, the sticky flame/cloud damage still gives you piety if you do anything other than moving/waiting.

[Lasty]

I don't hate DOT on principle, but it feels out-of-flavor for this god and (with long-lasting forms like poison) makes it too easy to game the piety system. I do want to give players credit for sticky flame/cloud damage, but only if they're still actively fighting -- still "dancing". I don't want to make Uskayaw a god of kiting things, since that's a) obnoxious and b) almost entirely off-theme.

[Sandman25]

What is the problem with DoT? I always assumed that DoT spells are similar in power to direct damage spells. If anything, it is easier/safer to kill monsters with Poison Arrow or Bolt of foo and those are not 3 school level 6 spells.

[Sandman25]

I see we have 3 clear "leaders": Beogh, Ely and Nemelex. Nothing surprising I guess.

[duvessa]

I don't hate DOT on principle, but it feels out-of-flavor for this god and (with long-lasting forms like poison) makes it too easy to game the piety system. I do want to give players credit for sticky flame/cloud damage, but only if they're still actively fighting -- still "dancing". I don't want to make Uskayaw a god of kiting things, since that's a) obnoxious and b) almost entirely off-theme.

Then specifically prohibit piety gain while moving, instead of only allowing piety gain while doing an arbitrary list of actions.

[tach3]

Walk on water. Such jokes make DC great!

[Lasty]

I don't hate DOT on principle, but it feels out-of-flavor for this god and (with long-lasting forms like poison) makes it too easy to game the piety system. I do want to give players credit for sticky flame/cloud damage, but only if they're still actively fighting -- still "dancing". I don't want to make Uskayaw a god of kiting things, since that's a) obnoxious and b) almost entirely off-theme.

Then specifically prohibit piety gain while moving, instead of only allowing piety gain while doing an arbitrary list of actions.

But then wouldn't you be tempted to post that Uskayaw is a badly designed god because you lose piety if you drink two potions, but you gain piety if you cast sticky flame and then drink two potions?

[4Hooves2Appendages]

Of the gods there I dislike Nem the most. Nem is powerful enough that I tend to join at an early altar, but around Lair I regret it because of the ridiculous inventory clutter. It's probably me, but I obsess over what to carry and what to leave behind, trying to think through all the minute edge cases (like keeping a wand of flame in case I want to make steam clouds over water to block LOS. I'm an idiot.). Nem's inventory conduct feels very painful.

[duvessa]

I don't hate DOT on principle, but it feels out-of-flavor for this god and (with long-lasting forms like poison) makes it too easy to game the piety system. I do want to give players credit for sticky flame/cloud damage, but only if they're still actively fighting -- still "dancing". I don't want to make Uskayaw a god of kiting things, since that's a) obnoxious and b) almost entirely off-theme.

Then specifically prohibit piety gain while moving, instead of only allowing piety gain while doing an arbitrary list of actions.

But then wouldn't you be tempted to post that Uskayaw is a badly designed god because you lose piety if you drink two potions, but you gain piety if you cast sticky flame and then drink two potions?

It seems to me like every time you lose the slightest piece of ground in an argument on Tavern, you get wilfully disingenuous to the point that it is pointless to continue the discussion. That's pretty much one step above name-calling. It would be better for everyone if you approached these topics with the aim of improving the game instead of massaging your ego.
You claim that Uskayaw is supposed to give you piety when you actively do damage. Right now Uskayaw gives you piety when you do damage while also pressing the right keys. The fact that Uskayaw users interested in using the '.' and 's' keys should keep a pile of arrows (stones if they have throwing >= 2), inscribe them @*9, and macro 's' and '.' to 'F9J' is transparently terrible design. There is no design problem whatsoever with Uskayaw not hating potions.

[Lasty]

I don't define disagreeing with you as losing ground. I probably could have tried to make my point in a more polite way, but I have been under the impression that politeness isn't something you put a premium on.

My point is this: if Uskayaw likes doing damage and hates not doing damage, then Uskayaw hates drinking potions because drinking a potion cannot do damage. You don't like the current piety system because you can gain piety from DOT effects by taking pointless attack-like actions. I don't like your suggested revision because it allows you to convert drinking a potion from a piety-negative situation to a piety-positive one if you first cast sticky flame. In my view the current situation has very, very little impact on gameplay; spoiled players might choose to take a pointless action once during an average game assuming they're not specifically trying to prove a point. In my view your revision will put strong incentives on Uskayaw worshippers to get DOT effects in order to allow them to take non-combat actions in combat without losing piety.

What I'm saying is that your solution feels worse than the problem, and it seems no less arbitrary. Obviously I didn't say all of that above, and I probably should have; sometimes I tend to subconsciously mirror the perceived style of the person I'm talking to.

[dowan]

popcorn.gif

But in all seriousness on the DOT issue... why not just only award the piety when casting the DOT, or when the DOT first affects an enemy(in the case of cloud spells and what not). Then you only get piety for combat actions. Am I missing something?

[duvessa]

Ok, so it's not supposed to be anti-kiting, it's supposed to be anti-actions-that-cannot-do-damage? In that case you still should not punish waiting, because waiting is purely a convenience action (also, punishing waiting breaks searing ray), and you need to not award piety for evoking non-damaging wands, casting non-damaging spells, etc.

spoiled players might choose to take a pointless action once during an average game assuming they're not specifically trying to prove a point.

...Do you just never use '.' or 's'?

But in all seriousness on the DOT issue... why not just only award the piety when casting the DOT, or when the DOT first affects an enemy(in the case of cloud spells and what not). Then you only get piety for combat actions. Am I missing something?

That would require adding some new facilities to Crawl's code for all the ways to damage a monster, which nobody wants to do.

[dowan]

Lazy ass crawl code keeping secrets from the gods...

[Lasty]

(also, punishing waiting breaks searing ray), and you need to not award piety for evoking non-damaging wands, casting non-damaging spells, etc.

Ah, fair point. I hadn't considered /HW and Searing Ray in particular. I'm definitely going to need to make some kind of change.

spoiled players might choose to take a pointless action once during an average game assuming they're not specifically trying to prove a point.

...Do you just never use '.' or 's'?

I do, but mostly out of laziness. In general, it'd be better to throw something, zap a wand, etc.

[Gongclonker]

We can't ever remove Nemelex, because it's one of the few things that rhymes with "Memorex". This will become super important if an underground rap artist ever decides to spit malmutating fire.

[Shtopit]

Uhm, they don't really rhyme. Let's remove him.