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Radircs

The Priest Gameplay: What do you Like/Dislike

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So with another change to a Priest mechanic on the horizon (Favor from Sac update) and since after a short search I did not find a topic like this (a lot of suggestion what should be changed and Priest sells) I think it's time to get at least some summery what we like or hate on the way Priest function. This is mostly for the Devs but also for other player that want to know how it is to be a Priest or already be Priest and want to make a suggestion for changes to have some reference point.

Short rules I would like to see you follow loosely for this thread (of course I can't enforce any of it but I hope I give enough reason why you should follow them)

No suggestions what have to be changed, this thread has the purpose to get a board view from the community what they think about Priests, if you dislike an aspect of the Priest gameplay state it as a dislike and don't bother to suggest changes to make it better in your opinion. We have a suggestion board for this.

Keep discussion minimal to keep this as a reality clean and easy to read list for devs and people to understand how we feel about Priests. If you really feel the need to answer some ones opinion go for it but since this is more of a view summery it will probably hurt the whole purpose of this thread.

Edit not reply if you want to add another point to your list because you remember about something you have forgotten or if you are corrected because you had misunderstanding something and draw conclusions you have now corrected about the gameplay.

So after this is out of the way lets start:

What I like about the Priest gameplay:
- The fact that it is restricted. It's an exchange of freedom for power and it is a great flavor to have to follow the rules of the good you follow to use part of his might.

- That favor gain is faster at lower level instant of constant like most other games. This is great to make Cheap QoL spells often available without unbalance them to much.

- Spell casting in general is a great addition to Wurm and the fact that not everyone can do it gives a real feeling of secrecy and make the QoL spells even more satisfying.

- That Plate make casting harder/reduce power of casts mostly. This reduces the power of Priests in PvP if they were high protective gear or make them faster to kill targets in spacial since their spells can shift the battlefield fast.

Disliked:

- The way the Restrictions are implemented. The no imping take a Priest complet out of the crafting loop and make it Impossible to play Priests alone. This level of dependency is for a lot of people a reason to don't play priest or make a alt and this is sad.

- That enchants in Spacial the Tool ones are way to hard. I get it that they need to be somewhat gated on the other hand they feel way to necessary for a smooth game experience. The high Favor cost is ok but why it needs to be having such a high difficulty? Shattering items is not fun since there is a lot of work in the HQ tools and you need to grind channeling to have a somewhat reliable chance to get some nice enchants of it feels real bad.
 

- The Faith gain is horrible. Sermon groups are a thing and support Alting a lot just for the Faith gains. The Fact that you restricted if you are just a small group (like 5 people) or have to ask like the next 3 deeds around you to get enough people for a Sermon together to reset your counter feels bad. It adds a lot of social stress because in spacial as a new just converted Priest you can't give a lot back for their time.

- The Buffs are horrible to use. They are unpredictable thanks to the way power is applied to spells, the duration is awful short on a medium cast buff. I don't think I ever see a Priest wast favor for this in PvP except Oak shell for a corps run before the whole thing with the gravestones was implemented. Overall the buff system feels quite useless or hard to maintain and so only some what possible to get in PvE running.

 

-That enchanting have a hidden powerboost if they enchantet from 0/ non enchantet items. This feel counterintuitive to the rest of the game.
 

 

Edited by Radircs
Add another dislike and link to the Favor update discussion
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What I dislike about priest game play is that the bring classes into classless game. They ruin the concept of Wurm that you can be anything you want if you put your time into. Hate that you cant be both priest and crafter on one character but you have to use alt, and even then spells are rigidly confined to priest type without ability to build your own set of desired spells...

If this is my game i would ditch priest concept long time ago, and made religion much more complex skill subset where you would have to grind for specific group of spells just like any other skills

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Just letting you know I updated the title to be a little clearer! 

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What upcoming change to priest favour from saving are you talking about. I have seen no such announcement.

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LIke:

- That spells like Strongwall, Genesis, Wild growth, franatic charge etc exists

- Faith/Favor system (as resource, in general)

Don't like:

- That i have to make another character to get access to the skill set or play on specific server cluster with specific skill transfer connection

- That is something that is constantly changed (With or without announce, based or not based on feedback, relevant or not relevant feedback)

-  Timers or long timers, (strongwall, sacrifice for favor - just example)

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3 hours ago, kochinac said:

What I dislike about priest game play is that the bring classes into classless game.

To be honest, that argument often crossed my mind when I thought about Wurm's weird game design. You can be everything as a crafter, get 90 in every skill except...

 

Everything priest related.

 

If you want to be a priest? Basically it forces you to play 2 accounts. Huh?

 

As for pvp let's be honest for the last decade priests basically turned the tide of combat. The last big spell update a 1-2 years ago pretty much made priests into walking nukes. I still remember fights with 15 non priests vs 5 people (3 of them Fo's or Sme's) and the 5 guys won.

 

Turn the clock a few years more everyone and their uncle were smeagain priests. Before that everyone was a fo.

 

I wouldn't mind if we were allowed to be priests on Pve, as long as we'd have a limited spell set we could train (with a cap) , similar to how a smith in wurm can focus on various subskills : Wep smithing, plate smithing, etc.

 

Priests in Wurm are just extra accounts really. I've never met a single player who mained a priest and did not have any other alts.

 

Basically what I hate about it ? Wanna be a priest? Make an alt and pay more money.

 

 

 

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One of the few PvE priest mains who has hung on over the years here...

 

Likes:

Fo's passive is nice to have for flower gathering; generally a good way to play if you like random small acts of kindness (mailboxes and critter cures!).

 

It's a unique way to see wurm, and it's a good life if you don't mind spending A LOT of it on the road.

 

Healing at rifts, because it actively helps people.

 

My "useful" spells - Light of Fo, Life Transfer, Cure Light Wounds, Wild Growth.  Also had good fun buffing Kindra with oakshell and bearpaws to watch her punch a troll to death (with some healing!)

 

Dislikes:

Terrible balance of spells for PvE (all spells are balanced to target PvP), stealth nerfs (looking at you removing disease cure from heal), being "alter chained" for all priest skill development, logging on my free toon to cut a tree that grew on my lawn.

 

The biggest gripe is priests are really "mono-skill", they don't get much use from most skills in-game so they're stupidly easy to alt.

 

Overall, Sindusk started a great overhaul, but when they left it feels like priests were once again shelved and left unfinished.

 

 

Edit (Added 15/09/2020) : Whenever we get kneejerk nerfed we end up waiting 1--6 months for any form of balance/QoL restoration, if any.

Edited by Etherdrifter
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mag priest main here

pros:

nobody asks me for imps

nobody asks me for casts because mag has no good spells

i bonk things slightly gooderer

cons:

i cant dig like wtf mag ur trash let me dig tar

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I was a Vynora priest, not long, but

 

I liked:

- spells,

- excuse not to mine.

 

I disliked:

The fact I can't even imp altars, slabs or highway, markers or wooden items - things that Vynora likes. Priests should be able to normally perform at skills their deity likes, in case of Vynora road, wood and water related such as paving, carpentry (including ship building). 

Edited by Platyna

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I've got a Vynora priest alt,

 

Like:

the enchanting.

 

Dislike:

He's just useless for everything else but enchanting, jut a second client I alt-tab to.

He can't improve items so why should I spend time on him besides praying and enchanting.

Having to get the prayer skill up to 70 for the Benediction buff.

 

I just don't like splitting my time over 2 characters and I can't really play em very well at the same time, but the idea of magic is so fun!

 

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Like
having access to magic and spells is cool and fun.

Dislike
Too restrictive. Why can't each priest improve things that fit their deity thematically? Give lib and mag the smithing tree, give vynora the carpentry and masonry tree, give fo the tailor and clay tree

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Like
Priests doing priest stuff

Dislike
Priests doing priest stuff

Honestly the way priests where a long time ago was great you had your 4 main gods with their offspring as i call them(player gods) you had a fun little setup things where fine priests felt good and now now its like they where driven underground and are being hunted down and nerfed every time they come out into the light
My biggest issue with priests as to what i like or dislike isnt even a game mechanic itself related to them its how they are treated by staff and players on 1 side they get shafted left and right and left in a desert with no rations and then bitched at if they as much as say something about it and on the other side you have them being treated as worthless slaves that have no real value other then being a cash cow

Priests deserve better

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Priests being relegated to alt status or village-only gameplay is pretty lame, but you can understand it from a game standpoint.

 

One solution that I've always wondered about was if priests could craft and improve things, but anything not within a thin range of approved skills relevant to each god (mining for Magranon, etc) would consume a small amount of favor on each use. You could do the actions even if you had no favor for them left to consume, in essence preventing someone from hoarding huge amounts of favor while undergoing "forbidden" skills yet not completely ejecting them from the core gameplay loop.

That way, your deity choice reflects a focus on a particular set of skills, and if you play to the theme and follow those skills, you get to tote some badass spells around while doing it.

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I have quite a few vyn/fo priests. I really wish that casting could be a main form of combat instead of needing to mix melee in with it. 

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I like:

 

Priests aren't for everyone. Every time I see a complaint it's that "I can't do this or can't do that' on a priest. that's usually because People want to be able to do it all themselves. They don't feel they should have to find someone to do their enchants. Priests are a very niche character, and as such, should not be able to do much. If you're smart enough, you can figure out plenty of things for priests to do that does not involve imping. But again people want to do everything.. including standing at a forge or carpentry station and imp something to high quality so they can cast it and make a lot of silvers.

 

Dislike:

 

the prayer grind. Prayer is stupidly hard to grind, involves being chained to an altar for months and months just to get to 70. Priest I knew on old servers usually went to Epic to get it done, but on the new servers that isn't an option, so I suspect there will be a lot fewer players with benediction. Might be a good thing..

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Like:

  • Many of the utility spells are really useful.
  • The way favor recharges (faster while it's low)

Dislike:

  • A lot of systems encourage alts
    • Faith gain is so slow that the best way to get it is through sermons, which encourages making a ton of alts and running them for a few months, especially on lower populated servers (South Freedom)
    • Linking is required for some spells, which in general just means that people get a favor battery if they need to cast those spells. The changes to linking did nothing to change this
  • The rite spell journal requirement is outright terrible design for how infrequent those spells get cast on the server that you live on.
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A lot have said it already but:

 

1. Gotta have multiple accounts to do all the game has to offer.  This won't change because Devs want pay checks.

2. Gods.  I don't like pretending they exist in RL or games.

3. If we absolutely MUST have multiple accounts, why does it have to be 5 accounts to craft and have all the spells?  Are you nuts?

4. Sacrificing is the worst mechanic and needs to be removed.  Just let favor regen over time, but much faster, so we can skill channel grind similar to any other skill grind.

5. Linking should just be completely removed.  Do you see a bunch of fighters link their strength?  Removing linking would really help balance things in the game.

6. If you refuse to get rid of gods and priest classes, then for goodness sake, try to make them equal in their spells.  Like Oblivion says, no love for Mags enchants.  The mining spells is almost cool, but you ruin it with the limits on benefit for higher levels. Why?  Everyone can be a high level miner in a month of hard grind.  Every other priest has enchants that last a lifetime of use.

 

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If people feel the necessity to make alts (sermons to grind, channeling grind, etc) then the system isn't good. Faith is too slow. I wish it would give you access to all the spells sooner, but your success rate/cast power was what you had to grind, instead of both as it is now. 

I dislike how little item enchantments mag has, and even his best one (stone strike) is not even worth the favor to cast it. I would like it alot more if that enchant got buffed 2x-3x at least.

Edited by Radni
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So unlike other people, I actually like that there are limitations to priests. I don't like what a lot of servers do in WU in having everyone be a priest with every spell. That to me just ruins part of the gameplay just to have an "easy mode", which I can see being great for some, but not for all.

 

I think linking should still be around for the servers spells such as ros as well as making things easier for lesser priests (to an extent). I love that spells like life transfer no longer need a link if you have 100 faith but still doable at lower faiths through links. I think that was a good move.

 

I agree with some that faith could increase faster, especially since almost the only way to get to 100 faith is through sermons (or probably a mentally taxing year of 5 prayers a day). While I like the idea for sermons as a social event, I think it's almost too forced for those that just want a 100 faith priest.

 

Sacrificing items I think could use a little more balance. I recommend NOT removing any of the existing items as you'd be screwing over people have already grinded those skill for favour. However, I think adding in new secondary items for sacrificing could help balance things out a little more. It's not really fair that vynora priests have to rely on cordage rope which is not even double favour since their sacrificing item of yoyos it just not worth it. I also want to say I am completely against Wurmhole's suggestion of completely removing the saccing of items and I think it would be a mistake to just have favour increase faster. This is still a game of grinding afterall still.

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7 hours ago, Wurmhole said:

4. Sacrificing is the worst mechanic and needs to be removed.  Just let favor regen over time, but much faster, so we can skill channel grind similar to any other skill grind.

I main a Fo priest on both northern and southern. My crafter is co-main, but closer to alt really. This is my biggest grief of being a priest, the endless churn of time and materials for favor.

I like the priest benefits, and tolerate the restrictions.

I like being able to heal, cure critters.

 

I dislike the imbalance in the distribution of enchants.

I dislike that more low level spells aren't shared (light token, mend). More everyone spells, than specific deity specific ideals.

I dislike grinding skills and churning material just to dump it into an altar. I like creation, not destruction.

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Like:

ability to offer solutions to unexpected problems. Genesis, strongwall, summon soul, etc. Utility spells.

 

Dislike:

priest mechanics constantly changed without a clear vision of what the end product should be.

 

Btw, all of you complaining about saccing, think ahead. If saccing is removed, farmers will come at you with burning pitchforks ;)

Edited by Shmeric

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cooking!  That is what farming should be for.  Not to throw it all away.

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I mained a fo priest back in the 1.0 launch and am currently maining a fo priest again with a mag priest as an alt.  I love how they removed some of the old restrictions we had which made priest maining quite difficult and now I can't imp things or pave basically, which sucks, but not as terrible as it used to be.

 

For my fo priest, my biggest complaint is literally the same complaint I've had for years, why does LT require me to make another fo priest battery...

 

This is my first experience with a mag priest so I've been testing out it's skills to try to figure out what it has that's so amazing.  Light token is nice, Magranon's Fire is, uhh, convinient?  SW is obviously amazing as well, and as stated previously mag priests can hit much goodererer but other then those few spells mag priests seem to be lacking in useful spells.  Maybe I'm missing something idk, but I've been pretty underwhelmed with mag.

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I like priests hard gameplay. We got too much priests in game already and I like that most of them too lazy to get better or they spread too much on other things so as priests they progress slowly, so I can be better then others or every one who work hard on his priest can be better than others. Priests gamplay is counter part of whole crafting gameplay, they must be hard as they is. I like there is alot spells which you unable to use while you are not skilled well and like the riscks of shattering system which you still can manage enchanting high ql tools, and i like the idea that probably there will be even more spells for priests - that will be ideal improvement of thir gameplay than anything else.

To be fair I was angry about last changes at most part because this changes means that Devs probably will make priests gamplay alot easer than now it is.  But I have adapted to the latest priest changes, i like this already and it suits me that the priest has become got even harder gameplay than before! It still not very hard, many priests who was work hard on themselves, without spread on other things too much, already got their channeling around 60 without any links abuse and we must be carfull to not depreciate their hard work via rework priests leveling system. And im afraid of idea that Devs will simplify every part of the game to make it more casual as many not interesting games. We can look at Epic cluster and what casualty made with Wurm there - 0 online.

Edited by Nelsy

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I know a lot of people disliking how restrictive priests are. I get that is a fair point, alternative idea though what if there were more useful things you could do as a priest that were still kind of unique. 

 

Recently subbed and converted my alt to mag, not a priest yet but already actually kinda looking forwards to casting light tokens all over the place as I'm mining for ores. 

 

More utility things and low cost casts that can be nice to have. You can't imp, but you can cast, give casts that we will use day to day as well as the powerful ones everyone loves like enchants, heals, strongwall. 

 

Also it gives low level priests something to do, rather than just sit and stare at far away goals. 

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