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Grumpysmith

Priest / Religion overhaul

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3 minutes ago, Launcelot said:

Personally I would like to see priests with the same spell beable to link... only because I think it is odd Nahjo knows LT but he can't link with his Fo brother who also knows the spell to cast it. I guess they have a different type of mana that doesn't allow it?

Interestingly enough though they do understand a common favor because if you vessel a gem with one priest type, another priest type can use it.

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1 hour ago, Etherdrifter said:

So far those impositions have not encouraged priests to be "used in a community" but rather "as alts".  The only real difference between the "everyone as a priest" scenario and the current "everyone has a priest alt" scenario is that the former means less CC income.

Of course, if priests were rebalanced to be a major role rather than just alt fodder....

I am not against rebalancing priests and you know that. We had a discussion before as to how to make QoL improvements for priests. That I am totally with. Allowing priests to do everything a non priest can, however, its a different matter and something I have experienced with WU. No one buys casts (or trade, gift, etc) because everyone can do their own casts. Getting to 50 channeling is a joke in this game. Getting to 70 is not out of the question for someone dedicated enough. 

 

Priests need an overhaul, yes, but there are other ways to improve QoL that are not the removal of priest restrictions.

 

1 hour ago, Launcelot said:

*scratches head*

 

 

I don't think it is the game's intention that 1 person can do everything, this includes having 15 premium alts to cast all the things. I think the idea was for people to specialize and group together/socialize to fill the holes ie things they can't do. Personally I would like to see priests with the same spell beable to link... only because I think it is odd Nahjo knows LT but he can't link with his Fo brother who also knows the spell to cast it. I guess they have a different type of mana that doesn't allow it? I think WL to WL or BL to BL would just make it a bit to easy imo but then again I do not mind it staying how it is since I know about 10 different people that play this game as their "main game" with at least 1 priest alt I can set a date and time to link (Fo, Nahjo, Vyn). If you want to be a hermit and cast everything then that is your choice and you need to pay dolla dolla bills to have that luxury. 

 

I rather them not make WO more of a single player game.

 

Agreed. 

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One idea I had a while ago to lift restrictions on priests but also prevent everyone from becoming priests as to require a congregation of non-priests to unlock spells. Non-priest congregants get a passive bonus, the priest gets access to more powerful spells and full crafting abilities. No congregation and you're a priest in name only. Adjusting the number of congregants for the most powerful spells sets the ratio of priests to non-priests.

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That would effectively lock out non "special snowflakes" from ever attaining certain content on the game. Thats a poor idea imo.

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7 minutes ago, Angelklaine said:

That would effectively lock out non "special snowflakes" from ever attaining certain content on the game. Thats a poor idea imo.

I don't follow. Please elaborate.

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If I am understand correctly, you are making it so only a specific number of players can be a priest. Or making it so a priest needs followers to be able to cast spells.

 

With the low numbers we have on wurm atm, that would effectively make it so only people with effective communities (Chaos players, The MR guys on Exodus etc) are able to have priests. This would make the priest player base a very niche group and would effectively lock out other players out of that content.

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13 minutes ago, Angelklaine said:

If I am understand correctly, you are making it so only a specific number of players can be a priest. Or making it so a priest needs followers to be able to cast spells.

 

With the low numbers we have on wurm atm, that would effectively make it so only people with effective communities (Chaos players, The MR guys on Exodus etc) are able to have priests. This would make the priest player base a very niche group and would effectively lock out other players out of that content.

This is correct, tho the magnitude depends on the ratio of followers to priests. As you said, if priests have no restrictions then everyone is a priest, so currently you can be either a crafter of a priest. This was just an alternate form to that balance.

 

I am still unsure how "special snowflakes" works in your objection, however.

Edited by Darmalus

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Yes but it will make it so only people with "friends" or "groups" can be priests. Everyone else has no option. If you make it so you only need 1 or 2 followers, then it will fix nothing (people who wants priests will just get non priest alts for casting). In fact, it will only make it so people who can pay multiple premiums can priest. The current state of the game makes it very difficult to find followers; Add to that the fact that they most likely will need to be of the same religion, and you have the same problems we have right now, with the caveat that is even harder to cast spells. 

Edited by Angelklaine

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True. I tend to consider being a priest intrinsically social, but that's not the only way to play.

 

One issue with priest balance has always been the lack of choice or alternatives. Be a priest yes/no.

If there were other things you could be we could achieve balance more easily. Be a priest, or a paladin, or a knight, or sailor, or etc. To spread players out.

Wurm, in effect, is a game with 2 character classes currently.

Edited by Darmalus

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I wouldnt mind an intermediate class (Like Templar, or Paladin) that would give less restrictions, but limit your spells as well. Something like cap your faith at 40 and allow you to have all the spells up to there. Would be interesting. 

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8 minutes ago, Angelklaine said:

I wouldnt mind an intermediate class (Like Templar, or Paladin) that would give less restrictions, but limit your spells as well. Something like cap your faith at 40 and allow you to have all the spells up to there. Would be interesting. 

I don't think alternatives would necessarily require spellcasting, just unique powers or abilities that would appeal to different players. Though a half-priest like a templar or paladin would be a good first experiment.

 

EX: a "Peasant" class that changed the 75/25/5% speed levels to encumbrance to 90/80/70% speed without increasing actual carry capacity would be quite attractive, depending on what else was available.

Edited by Darmalus

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Multiple classes would be aming a bit high is my guess. That would be some major development and testing.

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An intermediate step between priests and non-priest sounds good in theory, but in practice I suspect it would just overcomplicate things

 

The idea of magic as a congregation falls sway to the "alt farm" and doesn't really fix anything.

 

The crux here is that anyone can get a good strong priest by levelling channeling up to 50 or 70; folks with more than one priest alt have a much easier time (linked casting exploit).  The only way you're going to root out "priests as alts" is to give them a wider skillset that needs to be levelled individually, or link priest spells in with existing skills (though you'd need to give priests a better way to level those skills because creation levelling is just pain).

 

A simple example being wild growth being influenced by faming/forestry and healing spells being effected by firstaid.

In essence, give priests a different use to existing skills so that they, like non-priests, have a wide number of skills to level before being considered "effective".

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Unless the skill requirements are 90 or greater, this would do nothing to address the problem of "Everyone is now a priest". I imagine that many older mains would instantly have access to all or almost all priestly powers by that method.

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21 minutes ago, Darmalus said:

Unless the skill requirements are 90 or greater, this would do nothing to address the problem of "Everyone is now a priest". I imagine that many older mains would instantly have access to all or almost all priestly powers by that method.

 

I'm rather thinking more that you still have priests and non-priests, simply that priests need work on other skills save channeling to effectively cast.

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15 hours ago, Etherdrifter said:

The crux here is that anyone can get a good strong priest by levelling channeling up to 50 or 70; folks with more than one priest alt have a much easier time (linked casting exploit).  The only way you're going to root out "priests as alts" is to give them a wider skillset that needs to be levelled individually, or link priest spells in with existing skills (though you'd need to give priests a better way to level those skills because creation levelling is just pain).

 

Is there a good reason why creation leveling -is- a pain? Even if creation and imping were the same skillgain, imping is superior because it uses less mats and results, in many cases, in more usable items.

 

Of course, this runs afoul of the rarity system, but then again, why should rarity favor creation over imping? Because everyone imps right now? :P This seems like a good example of badly balanced gameplay. Perhaps it -is- balanced, but by such hokey means that it causes downstream issues that can't be easily corrected without throwing everything out of kilter.

 

If nothing else, I would consider making creation as good as imping for skill (why does imping give skillgain for failure, but creation doesn't? that's needlessly frustrating!), while following the QL rule: if you're creating items with QL near your skill, you get normal gain; if you're creating lower than your skill, you get less. So creating would make sense starting out, but eventually you'd need to imp.

 

That doesn't really fix skills that can't be leveled via imping, but maybe it makes them easier to get started. Truly fixing the difference between skills that can be leveled via imping versus those that can't might help a lot, though.

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On 10/27/2017 at 7:28 PM, Angelklaine said:

I wouldnt be against a battery if you could have multiple characters per account. But paying an extra premium for just one spell is lame. The system should encourage you to try different religions, not force you to work on a second priest of the same which you will never skill up other than as a battery.

 

 

Making things easier for 'less premium' is by far, the dumbest idea they could make. Re-balancing priests to make it easier by any means, will be wrought with failure. Making them enticing in certain matters would be better, as a supporting role.

 

This will take some real strategic thought process, about what to gain, what to risk, and most importantly: Wurm's inherent inability to consider future and practical approaches when new features are rolled out. AKA - Stop thinking like some poop-socking high-school gamer.

 

 

17 hours ago, Etherdrifter said:

An intermediate step between priests and non-priest sounds good in theory, but in practice I suspect it would just overcomplicate things

 

The idea of magic as a congregation falls sway to the "alt farm" and doesn't really fix anything.

 

The crux here is that anyone can get a good strong priest by levelling channeling up to 50 or 70; folks with more than one priest alt have a much easier time (linked casting exploit).  The only way you're going to root out "priests as alts" is to give them a wider skillset that needs to be levelled individually, or link priest spells in with existing skills (though you'd need to give priests a better way to level those skills because creation levelling is just pain).

 

A simple example being wild growth being influenced by faming/forestry and healing spells being effected by firstaid.

In essence, give priests a different use to existing skills so that they, like non-priests, have a wide number of skills to level before being considered "effective".

 

 

All of your suggestions are really just "how to remove revenue from code-club without providing a value-offering alternative".  I'd say 99% of the suggestions that aren't new-feature posts, are generally ill-thought out.

 

I guess me and my 2 batteries (3x subscriptions) are 'exploiters' then? 

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4 minutes ago, Shazaam said:

I guess me and my 2 batteries (3x subscriptions) are 'exploiters' then? 

 

Pretty much ^_^

 

Edit for clarity: You are obtaining an advantage over other players who pay less and doing so to avoid mechanics put in place to encourage player interactions.  Though I may just be prejudiced about the whole "alt zerging on wurm is good" thing.

Edited by Etherdrifter

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39 minutes ago, Shazaam said:

 

 

Making things easier for 'less premium' is by far, the dumbest idea they could make. Re-balancing priests to make it easier by any means, will be wrought with failure. Making them enticing in certain matters would be better, as a supporting role.

It isnt our job to find or protect Code Club's revenue. Thats what they do. For us, it is to find better ways for us to entretain ourselves. After all, that is what we pay for.

 

A battery is not entertainment: Its a necesity for our entertainment. It is the support character you pay for to use your support character to your main. So in order to have a fully functional priest, you need 3 characters: A priest, a non priest to build what the priest may need, and a battery.

 

Now I can understand the fact that Priest is a choice and that the choice of living with the penalties is all mine. But being told I need a 2nd priest just so I can cast all my spells and nothing else its just silly. The mechanic was intended to work on a social environment, and with how limited the amount of players the game has now, it forces the creation of batteries. It should be revisited.

 

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An alternative structure to battery requirements would be to make powerful spells consume all available favor, including that from links, and have the extra be a bonus to the enchantment roll. The spell would still need a minimum amount of favor, but an amount a single player could have, like 90.

 

Another possibility would be consumables that temporarily boost one's favor cap, maybe as a Trader item.

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1 hour ago, Etherdrifter said:

 

Pretty much ^_^

 

Edit for clarity: You are obtaining an advantage over other players who pay less and doing so to avoid mechanics put in place to encourage player interactions.  Though I may just be prejudiced about the whole "alt zerging on wurm is good" thing.

 

 

 

LMAO

 

 

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I would like to see the number of altars needed to support all of the priests reduced.  My deed is littered with altars to all of the various gods.  It would be nice if altars necessary for faith gains and sacrificing could be reduced to the two main altars BL and WL.  All priests could pray or sacrifice at one of these two altars, depending on their base alignment.  Altars for determining the prominent domain of a given area could be current altars, but I'd prefer that domain only apply to the original gods and not the player gods.

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How is it exploiting again? Because i pay more for better service, i'm 'cheating'? This argument is as old as 3D MMO's. I pay for a second account therefore i'm 'cheating'. I pay for a nicer car than you, I'm 'exploiting' life. See how little it makes sense? This game especially has 0 emphasis on others, in that all you pay for is convenience. No townie friend to link for a spell you 'need', but 'want"? Subscribe another one.

 

The problem with some of you, especially those that play with a juvenile thought process, is you somehow feel the need that the measly money you spend on this game per month is somehow justified that less should equal more. Every goods and service you've ever paid for is based on the model that paying for more = better. The digital gaming world is no different, and if the mechanics are that only an extremely small portion of the game is inaccessible due to social structures, or your inability to do something within the confines of the game, then 'paywall' is a solution for you. There's no situation in the game that says "i cannot get this unless i 100% pay real money for it", unless it's based on premium status (skills only).

 

Trust me, i hate having batteries and paying more. But i do not have the time to find people to link with, and an extra 8eu per month is nothing in terms of value for me. That being said, yes it's not your onus to understand how CC creates revenue, but I'm simply telling you your suggestions are negative-sum solutions. You have to offer alternative-value to customers when you need to actively change something that may negatively impact them for a potential 'gain' through another group of customers.  If anything I'm on the players side all the time, because i sure as hell love to critique decisions i think are made half-assed or otherwise completely asinine. 

 

You are also putting together a small issue with a completely different major issue. The fact that this game dwindles in population is a whole other problem, and one that is never addressed properly. If anything, priest/religion overhaul is low priority.

 

Edited by Shazaam
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I'll start my comment with the fact that I don't have a priest, because I made a promise to myself that if I play Wurm I won't alt it. (I have a tendency to alt the crud out of games normally...to the point where I had 15 characters on LOTRO at one point before I suffered burnout, and multiple servers full on other games.) I just have a highly skilled main.

Therefore, because of the restrictions on this game...and my promise to myself, I cannot even play a priest. I started early on wanting to be a Magranon priest (Before player gods even were implemented)...because I saw they could collapse tiles and I wanted to be able to fix my own mines when I messed up/wanted to change things...so I became a follower and worked my way up to the 'max' before you can priest up...then I read about the restrictions and priesting became a whole aspect of the game I simply cannot touch, even though I'd love to be able to use a few of those spells. I've only ever paid 2 people to collapse a couple tiles in my mines over 4 years of playing, so the game coin is certainly not going into other priest's pockets from me either. I'd rather wait for the game to collapse tiles by itself than pay someone for a quick fix. (And that's even slower than watching paint dry.)

This argument that we should keep it so priests are interdependent upon others is a throwback to old gaming thought processes...on a game where we're losing people/spreading it too thin...something needs to change. I'm not saying we should all become uber-mage-of-doom or whatever either. As a person who's often kept premium up while playing, it's an utter waste to just lock our characters out of the ability to even participate/use certain stats/skills. I have pretty high soul strength/soul depth from working on a lot of my skills, and I'd heard rumors that those were useful for certain priest spells.

Kind of pointless to keep it so all we can do is use the god as our toilet for items we want to throw away (saccing). I also really believe they should tweak/adjust the deed bonuses you can earn from saccing stuff...make it be earn-able/permanent bonuses to our deeds...stuff that's accrued over time (Which would stick with the 'long term'-ness/grindy of this game.)...instead of losing 15% every 'day'. I mean, it's not even worth the time/effort to sacc most things in for that stuff...I had 28% healing bonus on my deed, at one point, and it didn't even last very long. Like, why would someone waste the effort to push one of those up when it'd just be down again in no time at all... (I'm starting to ramble off topic...but as far as I know, the deed bonuses were intended to be 'faith' bonuses as per wurmpedia...)

I would personally like to see the simple spells like dirt creation/mine collapses/animal bad trait removal/overall useful spells/skills of that nature to become something that a follower could do, or re-do priests so the low stuff like that could be acquired without all the hardcore restrictions. (You know, for the Quality of Life of us PvE players.) If you really have to...separate out the 'combat' oriented stuff/spell lists and restrict the crud out of them/balance it out..(I mean, I'd love to have LT on my weapons, but I simply won't pay someone to do it because I don't trust people as far as I can throw them in-game....and even with 49 bstr that isn't very far...) I get why we don't want everyone to have a max LT 'godly' weapon with all the trappings...but I also wouldn't lend a friend a rare/supreme/fantastic to cast on either...because I'd be worried it'd blow up/shatter or they'd SAY it did and keep it. You're expecting way too much trust on a game where you're goading people to steal other's stuff 'for fun'.

I have managed to play numerous other games where they allowed us to use magic and still manage to socialize without it being a 'requirement'. (Anyone remember having mages on WoW where they could make everyone food and we'd sit around chatting while we re-buffed/got our stats back in shape?) I don't see where forcing the requirement/thereby forcing socialization between people is helpful. We'll socialize if we want to. We don't need to be shoved into doing so. I also agree with at least a tiny portion of another person's comments up there about folks just doing the 'one-person alt army' thing to get around these silly restrictions anyway...I have a neighbor who does this, and I never hear diddlysquat from them because they are constantly running 3-5 clients making a massive bunch of changes to a location/doing it all by themselves anyway...this current theme with priests isn't working IMO.

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@Shazaam
You're confusing using a meta currency to obtain an advantage within a system (purchase of extra toon on wurm) vs using an in system currency to obtain an advantage within a system (purchase of a nicer car).  That would be why your notion does not make sense, because it it exploring two quite different ideas from which there is little (to no) parallel ground.  Also I disagree that wurm has "0 emphasis on others", otherwise we'd ALL have moved over to WU ;)

 

You generally seem to be a person in favour of microtransactions (or cash shop buffs), which is fair enough.  I personally disagree with such ideas and feel that they are detremental to any game they are implemented in, however I am also aware that in some instances it does work in a game's favour (in terms of keeping the game operating!).

 

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