Priests: Working as intended?

[Etherdrifter 2,518]

You folks all know that I'm the resident "give priests a break" guy.  I've spent about 3 or 4 of my 5 years playing wurm campaigning for some changes to make the priest gameplay a little better.  So far, to date, the only real addition that has had a positive impact on my life as a priest has been rifts (healers ftw!) though this has been curtailed somewhat due to later changes to healing.  Most other updates to the game (underground building, bridges, new furnature/craftable items, clothing etc) have generally been inaccessible.

 

From what we've seen in the past 5 years there has been little to no priest specific content added to wurm (blessing liquid really doesn't count as unique since anyone can temp priest to do such a cast and 3/4 of priests can't do the basic mixing) save player gods, and those have mostly been hailed as "beautifully broken" in terms of spell balance.

 

The current situation with magic on wurm is that its something you buy an alt account for, you don't play the game as a priest you just use a priest alt to fill your pockets/do very specific chores.  Most priest players have moved over to WU for a better life on their servers.

 

So I figured I'd ask the question that all those priests who moved to WU would really be interested in seeing answered:

 

"Is this working as intended (no more new priestly spells, unbalanced player gods, "pet priest" is intended useage) or is there some change due in the near (<1 year) future?"

[Madt 1,178]

In my experience priests have always been treated like the bastard child who nobody wanted, only gets given the scraps from the table and a swift back hand to the face whenever they ask for more.

[Zekezor 3,188]

I still dont understand why priests is a secondary class in this game.

Like... Think about it... Why isn't priesthood just like meditation, a flavor to your already excisting character?

Channeling is just another skill and you would pick spells/bonuses based on personal preference.

But ofcourse devs wouldn't want to remove restrictions cuz then we wouldn't need priest alts. hurr.

Edited November 15, 2016 by Zekezor

[Rathgar 959]

Maybe instead of restrictions, priests should have a limit to their non-priest related skills, kind of like when you run out of premium

[icbash 352]

i think priest should be re looked at. if you can cut down trees you can imp wood stuff.if u can mine you can blacksmith. limits but same time let them do more. dig do masonry.

[RandomHero 53]

1 minute ago, Rathgar said:

Maybe instead of restrictions, priests should have a limit to their non-priest related skills, kind of like when you run out of premium

This has been suggested in great detail before that would work in the sense of actually being able to so things with limitations. This is probably one of the best suggestions for a fix/change to priests... They should be allowed to play the game and just be able to enjoy most of the games content. 

 

A priests specialty is that of being a priest and being able to cast but why can't a priest made a basic item or build a crappy house? It makes no sense that priests are that dumb in wurm they dontn know how to do anything outside of cast spells. Perhaps as a priest your non priest skill can cap at 25? Still allows you to do things at a much much slower pace and any items you make would be at max 40ish ql so wouldn't hold any value but it would be useable. This would allow people to play a main priest and still have a place to live MADE by themselves without the use of a free alt. But again this argument has been made before and it fell on deaf ears. 

[Pashka 707]

While it is true that as a priest I cannot build many things.  But as a priest, I can have many skills for single combines that are well over 25.  I can also make items to be used in single combines or even by other builders that would raise my skill over 25.  Why would I want to now limit those skills to only 25.  I do know that it is difficult to live on your own as a priest and not live in a village.  But just as I am selling my enchanted items, I can pay someone with the silver I gained to come build me a house or make me a boat or a wagon or cart.  I know that it would be easy to say that I should be able to do everything on my own but I look at it as a way that the silver gets moved around from my hands to someone else.

 

As a disclaimer, I am a vyn priest.  I do have a crafter that can make things for me but the priest is by a long shot the one that is played the most.  Once the deed is built (thank you Gatwick and Ishy for all the terraforming), a priest is more than able to live on their own and take care of their needs. 

[Finnn 3,303]

So priests can create and imp,

than non-priests can cast spells

where and what will the difference be than?

 

We'll all be able to do the same things, limited by the time that we can spend to level up certain skills. Limited only by the main deity taboo actions?

[Rathgar 959]

5 minutes ago, Finnn said:

So priests can create and imp,

than non-priests can cast spells

where and what will the difference be than?

 

We'll all be able to do the same things, limited by the time that we can spend to level up certain skills. Limited only by the main deity taboo actions?

 

So free players can do everything too, so why pay the game at all?  Answer: The skill cap.

Regarding priests, exactly the same.

 

then* then*

[Stormblade 617]

Break it down.

 

New Diety new spells

 

( With Current Limitations )

Premium up alt priests to convert or check out new spell list = $1000.00

 

( Without Current Limitations )

Convert mains - face it no limitations everyones gonna be a priest - to check out new spells = Zero extra money.

 

Priests are a worse cash grab than other things I've seen in other games.

 

[Ostentatio 1,970]

58 minutes ago, Rathgar said:

Maybe instead of restrictions, priests should have a limit to their non-priest related skills, kind of like when you run out of premium

 

Doing this for all skills would be really bad, for obvious reasons.

 

However, I think limiting effective skill to 20 for the things priests currently can't do is fine, like continuing complex items, building structures, or improving things. It would allow priests a modicum of self-sufficiency and actual function as characters.

 

Fun fact: The code already gives priests a penalty when they improve stuff!

 

I'm not sure how to best handle other stuff, like Fo priests mining, though, since that's more of an "acceptable conduct" god-specific issue.

 

 

tl;dr let priests improve and continue items/structures but limit their effective skill like a nonpremium account when they do it

[Finnn 3,303]

4 minutes ago, Ostentatio said:

 

Doing this for all skills would be really bad, for obvious reasons.

 

However, I think limiting effective skill to 20 for the things priests currently can't do is fine, like continuing complex items, building structures, or improving things. It would allow priests a modicum of self-sufficiency and actual function as characters.

 

Fun fact: The code already gives priests a penalty when they improve stuff!

 

I'm not sure how to best handle other stuff, like Fo priests mining, though, since that's more of an "acceptable conduct" god-specific issue.

 

 

tl;dr let priests improve and continue items/structures but limit their effective skill like a nonpremium account when they do it

To balance things, could crafters get *say...* 50 power casts for every spell possible?

 

Also.. some people have priests with beefed up skills, to make items at creation at certain ql.... and would not like that limitation of 20-25 or w/e skill *limitation*, this topic have been revived like 2-3 times in the past few months.

 

edit:

29 minutes ago, Rathgar said:

 

So free players can do everything too, so why pay the game at all?  Answer: The skill cap.

Regarding priests, exactly the same.

 

then* then*

btw I saw what you did there skipping something..

Edited November 15, 2016 by Finnn

[Odynn 2,248]

tbh, i'd rather see the priest gameplay being expanded (and not just spam favor then spells) through a complete rework of channeling /casting. Than give them crafting abilities.

 

Sorcery was supposed to be the way to let everyone have access to spells... we all know what kind of a joke it is. Devs, think a bit more and tweak that 10+ years goal into something decent (like 2 years max!).

 

Channeling and crafting is the perks of the gods champions, kinda make sense in the lore and mechanisms only a few have access to it. Also remember it comes with a cost to maintain it and it's not permanent.

 

Imho, a rework on the new players gods is needed, both to bring some balance and add new spells and perks. And with that a complete rework of channeling, removing the shatter (but add high damages instead) and make it work slightly more like the traditional imping with favor being the material and some new tools to add / substract power on a cast.

 

Spoiler

Keeping the power limit of 104 in mind, you can add a small, medium or large amount of power to a cast. Go higher than 104, your item become unstable and takes damage. Add more spells on your item, your previous cast might loose some power. The higher your cast power is the more favor you need to pour in it to raise the value. Add a bit more of randomness to that all and you will have something more interesting than spam cast > regen favor.

 

[Ostentatio 1,970]

19 minutes ago, Finnn said:

Also.. some people have priests with beefed up skills, to make items at creation at certain ql.... and would not like that limitation of 20-25 or w/e skill *limitation*

 

Yeah, that's why I mentioned only limiting it for things priests currently can't really do, like improving and continuing. As in, don't limit the actual skills, just treat them as limited when doing those particular things.

[Etherdrifter 2,518]

I personally think that allowing priests to do all a free account can do is just good logic, saves having 2 boxes up at the same time, but I've been pushing for that for 4 years and I doubt the devs will ever let that one pass.

 

What about expanding the domain of magic further?

 

Adding in some useful new spells (fire lighting, lamp enchanting, disease removal, terrain modification (tundra/marsh), water source creation, adding 10kg of water to a container, arcane fireworks, health auras to name a few)

Gve each type of priest a specialised (useful!) profession linked to their gathering skills/lore, something the everyday player of wurm would find handy every now and then

Add in some extra skills that are linked to certain kinds of spell (giving a boost to that particular type, for example "enchanting" and "conjuration")

Give priests a bonus to existing magic (an additional "housekeeping" spell for each sorcery the learn, a set of spells unlocked via meditation, roll bonuses to potion mixing (alchemy for all priests!) etc)

[Ostentatio 1,970]

Being unable to do tons of stuff is a big reason why priests are currently used in such a limited fashion. Another might be how strange Wurm's magic system is.

 

Essentially, you can only cast a few spells before your magic pool is entirely depleted, and by far the best way to restore it is by sacrificing rather specific kinds of items, so priests are highly encouraged to be chained up to an altar on-deed somewhere. Hell, even if you don't use all your favor, having favor below certain thresholds can temporarily negate passive bonuses you have from your god, further complicating things. I don't know if a good solution is to reduce favor costs on spells, or increase natural regeneration, or what, but the current situation does not seem great.

[Gaeron 551]

Priests were designed as a social character.

 

The idea was that if a village could support one then a player could go priest, losing the crafting abilities but bringing new abilities (channelling) to the table for the betterment of the village.

 

Due to the old deed system players were much more concentrated into fewer villages rather than everyone having their own plot as happens nowadays and that kind of specialisation was (and is) perfectly reasonable.

 

I've priested up on my main several times now and each time had no problems with the limitations and always had more to do than I had time to do it. So for me I had absolutely no issues with how priesting worked. If I ever wanted to do other things then it was really simple, I de-priested. No doubt I'll go priest again on my main at some point when it suits my objectives.

 

About the only change I'd want to see is how enchant power actually works. Rather than the miserable RNG we have now I'd rather it worked in the same way as imping does, on success a cast improves the power of the enchant by a bit, want a high enchant item? keep casting.

 

[Ostentatio 1,970]

4 minutes ago, Gaeron said:

Priests were designed as a social character.

 

The idea was that if a village could support one then a player could go priest, losing the crafting abilities but bringing new abilities (channelling) to the table for the betterment of the village.

 

I definitely think that priests' limitations would be less of a problem if the game had more incentive to live in social groups and actual villages. Don't ask me how, though. I hate to say it, but maybe deeds are too cheap? 1s/month gets you a nice little chunk of land, extremely easy to fund, and you have full control over it, so there's not a huge incentive to actually live with other people directly.

[Pashka 707]

The incentive is the same as it has always been.  The social game.  If you want it, go for it.  If you don't, don't.  It is that simple.  Making people that prefer living alone at a disadvantage does nothing but hurt the game as a whole.  Too many enjoy it.

[Etherdrifter 2,518]

1 hour ago, Gaeron said:

Priests were designed as a social character.

 

But this is no longer the case is it?  Most priests are "pet" priests, i.e. priests owned by a rich player aiming to augment his high level crafting toon.  The argument that they were designed to be a social character fails simply because that design has failed.

[Valdor 1,426]

To me, priests are working well. It's religions I have a problem with. The new player gods are washed out, recycled religions. They get a randomized spell lottery and have very little place in the lore of the land. Sure, it's nice to be a Nahjo priest, because he won the spell lottery, but I miss the old religion, where the four gods actually meant something and their followers and priests were all very different.

[Darmalus 631]

The problem with priests is they are a character class in a classless game. They would fit in better if there were other "classes" to choose from that would prevent the Wurm population from being 100% priests if the restrictions were removed.

[Raybarg 437]

First we must realize that priests are technically not "restricted", only crippled. Priests can do any actions just like any other player, they just get big faith losses which is unfair because of the difficulties in getting faith up.

 

Lets imagine the Faith loss priests experience would be removed from imping and building things. Revert the faith loss to only affect the actions mere followers get their faith losses from.

 

This would lead to a situation where everyone would become priests of some sort and grindageddon of Channeling would be accessible to all. Alot of players would be way happier. Enchant market would be only mildly affected due to the enormous work it requires to stand up as decent priest and even more work to be somewhat good at it (not to mention the work involved in keeping the priest channeling... although the 99ql garlic addicted priest types would probably become popular and some within their spell lists would see more radical market value decline.)

 

How about alts business and Codeclub collecting Prem money? Theres still the time component in enchanting process; 30sec sac, 30sec cast, frown 10-50x because "below 80 is too low". We start talking about hours of nonstop altar-staring with ~2-3min activity interval (depending on queue length). When it comes to things in Wurm where you would be staring at timer for 2min... people dont, really (I hope?) and instead do something else. Many have multiple characters to cycle trough to maintain interesting activity ratio within the game (Like me.)

 

I mean, even for garlic-addicted priests... 7x garlic is not that far from "cast per tile" ratio for variety of accessible skill levels and spells. We could imagine (despite this being different in practice) imagine it would 1 farm tile / 1 cast. So if a person is working adult with family, it leaves them 2-4 hours gametime per day. If that amount of gametime would be spent to dedicated nonstop queuing casting and we shall imagine it takes 1min per cast which is 60 casts per hour which is 120 casts to 240 casts per day. (At this point we tighten the imagination alot, throwing over any argument about 99skill farmer getting more than 7 garlic per tile and Woa only costing 5). Then it takes about 5 days to ripe a garlic field? (or 7? I dont know, I am bad at farming) so in order to maintain even the 2 hours per evening channeling which is 120 casts would be 600 tiles of garlic field, which needs to be harvested and sown. That amount of fields probably chews up one of the precious evenings, leaving the family guy be able to only cast 480 spells per week by playing 2 hours a day insanely queuing up sac/cast spam and one day to just grind farming. NOW THAT SOUNDS FUN!

 

Or that person might have 2 characters. Do things simultaneous, you can cast and farm at the same time. Or you can enjoy the game by hunting, building, imping while casting. Nothing would really change if that channeling-skilled priest could also build and imp because it would be just chaining queues of sac/cast anyway.

 

(Now, how about one imagines that Meditation would be a choice aswell. At 20 skill medi you choose to become "a guru" who can just meditate, farm and create simple items, but at the same time gets access to all the meditation goodies. We would see similar miserable divide between "gurus" and "pathless" as we see between "priests" and "followers". Consistency check here. How bad has it been to the game that everyone can learn to enchant grass for example? Isnt it still so that only select few actually get really far in meditation levels? How is high priest stuff different from meditation? Why cant we all be priests (if we choose to) just as we all can choose meditation path?)

Edited November 16, 2016 by Raybarg

[Ecrir 887]

Can't all priests do cooking related stuff just fine? If so then the coming cooking update should give priests a lot of new things to do. Adding more stuff to the game which everybody, including priests, can do sounds like a good approach. So I hope there will be more of that.

[Etherdrifter 2,518]

Well essentially the notion is:

 

1.  Stuff priests can do and stuff regualr folks can do increases (cooking update, rifts (90%) etc)

2.  Stuff priests can't do increases whereas stuff regular folks can do increases (bridges, underground housing, new complex constructs, new furnature etc)

3.  Stuff priests can do increases and stuff regular folks can't do increases (...  Nothing really.  Player gods?  The need to cast "bless" on transmutation fluid?)

 

While updates that benefit both parties are a good thing case 2 is much more common than case 1 and case 3 is nigh on non-existant.  A couple of case 3 features would remove a lot of priest saltiness.

 

Before I head back to work I'll leave another thought here : Runes will soon add the ability for engame players to cast "minor" spells, thus making some of the stuff that was once unique to priests accessible to non-priests.  Logic would dictate that this needs to flow both ways since its already massively against priests

Edited November 16, 2016 by Etherdrifter