Sermon Orb merchant item as alternative to sermon groups

[gorgian 175]

2 hours ago, Etherdrifter said:

Faith grind is pretty much afk?

You can choose to afk or not in between ticks. It's just like meditation. you can choose to go afk or no. 

[Arimus 81]

Couple points of clarification:

• I mentioned the .12 faith gain on the next sermon because wurmpedia states: "Note: if you did not gain at least 0.12 faith from the sermon itself, there were not enough valid listeners present to reset your prayer counter." That appears to be the minimum faith gain you would receive when your prayer/faith counter is reset.
• I'm not advocating this as a replacement to existing sermon groups. I suspect giving a sermon to a larger group would give more faith gain per sermon. (although that would be somewhat offset against the number of people in the sermon queue.)
• Someone pointed out that sermon groups are good because they require cooperation and help create community. I feel that there is much more cooperation and socializing via alliances, rifts, scout camps, etc. There are many ways to foster a community. Sermon groups are great if you like them, but shouldn't be required for reasonable faith gains (I don't think that anyone could argue that faith gains without the sermon gains and prayer reset are reasonable).  
• I wanted to point out the reason I feel this change is important. It's because most of the desired weapon enchants require 100 favor (hence either linking with another priest of the same deity and increasing spell difficulty, or having 100 faith). If the weapon enchants would instead consume 100% of favor instead of a hard 100 favor, (and maybe also have some type of effect on the cap on the power of the enchant) then this would be a much lower priority issue. But that would be a different suggestion.
• Someone made a comparison with weapon smithing. This would be a more accurate version of weapon smithing with faith rules applied: 
  • You would only be able to make 1h weapons until 100 ws (You couldn't make 2 handers at all until you have 100 ws).
  • You could only make 5 ws gains a day unless you completed a journal entry after level 70 ws, then you could have 6 gains.
  • After level 80 the daily gains would be so small that the only reasonable way to level is to light a forge near  6 other premium players that haven't lit a forge/oven/lamp/lantern/campfire in the last 30 minutes. You could do this every 3 hours. During this 3 hour time you could have 5(or 6) more gains, but in total those gains would be smaller than lighting the forge with the other players.
  • Just imagine how well that would go over. Hopefully, you chuckled at seeing how ridiculous that would be. 
• If the merchant item is much more than the cost of 5 additional alts, then most likely people would just choose to make the alts. (Remember once those alts go premium they can be used as inventory storage and you never have to worry about their deletion.) 
• When making this suggestion I was thinking mainly about the new Steam server. Everyone there will be starting out fresh. Nobody has leveled to 100 faith the hard way there, so there shouldn't be any hard feelings about this being more convenient and in line with the other skills. 

Thank you for sharing your opinions. I hope that this sparks some discussion within the Wurm dev team. Personally, I am really looking forward to the Steam server. I hope that we find ourselves with many returning players and a ton of new players. It goes without saying that it's in everyone's best interest for the game mechanics to encourage long term play, even if it changes what we are used to on existing servers. I can't imagine telling a new potential priest that "by the way, to get much beyond 80 faith for all those fun weapon enchants you are going to have to travel away from your deed for many weekends/evenings to spend a serious number of hours sermon grouping".

Edited January 18, 2020 by Arimus
fixing format

[Etherdrifter 2,512]

5 hours ago, Arimus said:

• Someone made a comparison with weapon smithing. This would be a more accurate version of weapon smithing with faith rules applied: 
  • You would only be able to make 1h weapons until 100 ws (You couldn't make 2 handers at all until you have 100 ws).
  • You could only make 5 ws gains a day unless you completed a journal entry after level 70 ws, then you could have 6 gains.
  • After level 80 the daily gains would be so small that the only reasonable way to level is to light a forge near  6 other premium players that haven't lit a forge/oven/lamp/lantern/campfire in the last 30 minutes. You could do this every 3 hours. During this 3 hour time you could have 5(or 6) more gains, but in total those gains would be smaller than lighting the forge with the other players.
  • Just imagine how well that would go over. Hopefully, you chuckled at seeing how ridiculous that would be. 

Oh definitely.

 

Lets imagine weapon smithing as you see faith:

-After a largely afk grind, you can instantly make some weapons at 100QL, without ever needing to level any other skill (genesis, strongwall, etc).  You get to pick only a couple of such weapons.

-The idea of 5ws gains is a funny one, now imagine that WS gains were as large as 0.12 every 3 hours; 10 actions a level, level 80--100 in 200 actions!  I think newer weapon smiths would be jumping for joy! Old one would be cursing though.

The point here is not that weaponsmithing is in any way the same as casting, but it is a good parellel to a skill players invest time in to trade with others.  If that skill were to become trivial to level at higher levels, I very much doubt it would be a good thing.  This change is aimed at making priest alts easier to level, less of a hassel.  Doing so just cements that idea, an idea I oppose simply because it results in an unhealthy game (mandatory 2 toons, because pet priests rarely travel, 0 ability for a 1-toon crafter to compete with someone who can CoC their tools or LT their weapons).

 

5 hours ago, Arimus said:

If the merchant item is much more than the cost of 5 additional alts, then most likely people would just choose to make the alts. (Remember once those alts go premium they can be used as inventory storage and you never have to worry about their deletion.)

This point, however, does make good sense.  Whales are going to be whales.

 

However, lets flip the table and ask "what would this item really do?"; it just turns the unofficial abuse of a mechanic into an official one.  Is that something beneficial to the game in the long run, or is it just a quick cash grab?

[Ostentatio 1,970]

Sermons are one of the few features guaranteeing real cooperation and interaction between diverse groups of players. I think a "workaround" for this would do far more harm than good.

[Arimus 81]

Response deleted. I got caught up in "defending" the suggestion when there is nothing to defend. Everyone is entitled to their opinions and I want to respect that.

Edited January 19, 2020 by Arimus
deleted