Piety Vs. Skill

[Darian Darkmind]

Well if you're already committed to remaking the whole religion system then sure, why not make changes to this as well.

Few things I'd do myself though:

1. Call the skill 'Piety' instead of Divinity. Not a big thing, but people are used to talking about piety so might as well use that as the skill name. If not, I'd go with Faith instead of Divinity.
2. Bigger thing, don't make it a macroable skill. Instead make it increase and decrease like stated in previous post: killing and dying, corrupting and cleansing, activity and inactivity, joining and leaving a religion.
3. Allow it to go beyond the class max so that it can be used like a competitive score to compare e-peens.

[GM Oden]

So one of the major reasons for this rewrite is to also balance and unify religions into a similar set of skill based rule sets, if it doesn't act like a skill in terms of training it, there's little point in my eyes in pushing forward with my religion system on Pangaea and I'll spend time writing it for my own shard instead.

I aim to bring a more familiar system to religions than something where it feels like it was crammed in with no thought, I know picture wise this is not something some of you see because since the dawn of Pangaea things have been this way, we were told they'd always be this way and there's not much to do about it. Balance for me is not just dps and hps meters, balance for me is does the system as a whole give an edge over other classes and the easiest, simplest way to ensure it doesn't is to take a system that while yes it has its shortcomings currently is less flawed than the current system.

Creating an entirely new system of deeds based gains is asking for current or future staff incorporating artificial timers yet again, abuse by some players for unforeseen loop holes and various other present and future head aches down the road.

It is a simple idea which is underpinned by a big task but I'm game to do it if this one criteria is met.

But I understand there's also a trust issue that maybe I've not earned with some of the old timers just returning, you've not been here for the last 6+ months where I struggled like the players to get things going but I'm still here, my intentions are to do a proper job and make something that is worthy of Pangaea and not actually take anything major away but give players the ability to reach their full potential whether their weekend warriors or 16 hour a day gamers and a system that is exclusive not inclusive does not make for a good system.

[Simmo]

Goddamnit you two and wall of texts. There are great ideas indeed but considering the lack of scripting i am proposing an idea that does not need a massive change from day 1.

[Darian Darkmind]

So one of the major reasons for this rewrite is to also balance and unify religions into a similar set of skill based rule sets, if it doesn't act like a skill in terms of training it, there's little point in my eyes in pushing forward with my religion system on Pangaea and I'll spend time writing it for my own shard instead.

I see your point. I thought the main point was to remove GM interference where piety is rewarded.

Personally the very idea of just having another skill to macro is just boring when you could instead have a unique, rewarding and interesting way of increasing it by playing, yet without any GM intervention. You gain it by actively playing the game, enjoying it and PvPing, not by repeatedly using the 'skill'. What comes to bugs, every new systems, just like your new religion system will surely have bugs and ways to abuse it, but that shouldn't be a reason not to do something.

The more thought I've given to it, the more I like it:
1. Upon entering a religion for the first time you receive 30 piety. After three months of absence, joining again will reward you with a new 30 piety. This will prevent abuse of re-entering the religion.
2. Each enemy killed rewards you with 1 piety. Each enemy you kill lose 1. You basically steal piety from your enemy. If the enemy has zero piety, you earn none either.
3. Corrupting an altar rewards 3-5 piety (depending of the number of religions) to those participating in the act. While altar is corrupted all religion members lose 1 piety each day. Cleansing an altar rewards those participating with 1-2 piety. Altar can only be corrupted once per day, every day the piety required to cleanse it is halved and it will automatically be cleansed after five days. While your altar is corrupted, you don't gain piety through any methods.
4. Every week a player has been online for at least 10 hours he is rewarded with 5 piety. If zero online time, his piety is decreased by 1 down to minimum of 30. If between 1 minute to 10 hours no change.
5. Leaving a religion halves your current piety. If you have a very high piety, way above max, you can join another religion without suffering true power loss giving the active and good players finally the option to decide to one day do something else without having to start all over again.

The main reason I like a system like this is that this will also allow religions to actually damage their enemies. Successfully killing them while avoiding death yourself and keeping their altar corrupted, you can drain their piety, weaken them and eventually even starve them to death, which is something Pangaea has never had. In a system like this, for the first time in Pangaea history you could actually achieve some sort of victory over your enemy as long as your side is better and more active.

This works especially well if there were only two religions since the only way to abuse it is if a religion takes in "training dummies" who purposely die on the enemies and vica versa. However, I've a hard time seeing that happen, because I think if there's one thing we can all agree it is that the players on this shard have very rarely found it in their hearts to help the players in the enemy religions. We've always been too busy destroying each other and this system would finally allow one side to achieve victory and force the other side surrender.

Of course, in theory this could eventually lead to a situation where the other religion is completely destroyed with zero piety while the other one has thousands at which point rebuilding the destroyed religion is close to impossible. While this is possible, time has proven us again and again, in this game and every MMO that upon a situation where one side grows completely OP the players considering themselves as the best would jump over to the other one and the fight would continue.

[Demian]

I like everything in Darians post, except for:

4. Every week a player has been online for at least 10 hours he is rewarded with 5 piety.

I think this would make it too easy to gain piety and I bet we would see people just afking to get the online time.

I'd instead add more possible tasks to do IG, similar to what I suggested in my first post to this thread. Some daily tasks which would ensure the time online is actually spent in raising your religions presence.

[everezt]

Code: Select all

Has nothing to do with piety vs skill

I don't like this piety idea, it's too dynamic, too many changes, too many chances for things to go wrong.

Having the standard piety limit is fair.


Although i think there should be a punish/reward system when it comes to activity, like umm.. you will get temporary 5 piety bless for let's say 24hrs when you please your god by being active and doing stuff, like plagueing, killing criminals/enemys/emmys etc. But this feels like it is hard to implement without needing GM intervention

[Glarundis]

The main reason I like a system like this is that this will also allow religions to actually damage their enemies. Successfully killing them while avoiding death yourself and keeping their altar corrupted, you can drain their piety, weaken them and eventually even starve them to death, which is something Pangaea has never had. In a system like this, for the first time in Pangaea history you could actually achieve some sort of victory over your enemy as long as your side is better and more active.

This. While I like to RP, PvM and PvP, and I'm way far from being an hardcore PvP'er, this is a big difference. The siege system actually started to allow something like this, since we could gain towns, and with corruption working + these new ideas of dynamic "piety/divinity" whatever, we could actually make these things have a real impact.

I would ask you (Oden) to try and consider this idea of a skill where it wouldn't go up just by macroing (it could gain passively at a low rate, like focus on some other shards), but you would gain faster by killing opponents, corrupting altar, staying more often in certain areas (near enemy altar), etc etc. This, if possible to be scripted, would be dynamic, which would mean it would make sure people are active, and it wouldn't require GM intervention.
I would put it like this:
Piety < macroable divinity < this new idea/dynamic faith/whatever
Because I do want things to be dynamic, but I want that to be on player's hands, and not actually be set on stone due to the fact that someone has been giving this or that power.

Of course, in theory this could eventually lead to a situation where the other religion is completely destroyed with zero piety while the other one has thousands at which point rebuilding the destroyed religion is close to impossible. While this is possible, time has proven us again and again, in this game and every MMO that upon a situation where one side grows completely OP the players considering themselves as the best would jump over to the other one and the fight would continue.

This again. Darian should be the player's spokesperson for religious issues xD..he knows how stuff works

[Johnny Walac]

Right off the bat I would definitely go for Skill, that is if certain changes are made to religions.
Lets call the skill Divinity as previously mentioned in the topic.

I would go for Divinity if:

100% Divinity is equal to 50 Piety. A major boost for religions not just powerwise but I think activity wise also. This would almost make me create a priest again instead of Monk. I wouldn't do it but id have to think about it, you know. Of course one would have to tinker with Knights/Rangers. Perhaps 85% Max Divinity which is equal to 40piety, which was pretty balanced imo.

So instead of killing time waiting for some good piety one would have to macro it instead? Yeap, but worth it. Though to compensate for this time-consuming macroing I would cut down on other time-consuming acts in religions.

Rites:

Abjuration: New idea with the skill Divinity:
-Target 1 Empy Foci - 1 Chant - 10 Mana = Blessed Foci (The durability is in question here. 100% Divinity equals X Piety in Blessed Foci Durability)
-Target 1 Bag/Container - 10 Chants - 100 Mana - Bless ALL focis inside with users Divinity as above.

Revelation: New Idea:
Remove it. Instead, when a new tome is made it already got all rites in it.

Beatification: New Idea:
Now here is a 100% Balance question. Id say anyone with Divinity can create a tome. With 100% Divinity you create the best tome available (Lower the power of the current best playermade tome - So every religion can create the best tome but its not as good as the best is today)

Should Empy Focis still be the shizzle? With a low playerbase the demand of Empy is higher than whats available. I would change this and make good focis easier to obtain and available to everyone.

Add Divinity to the game. Give everyone with piety X amount of Divinity (65% - 85% - 100% Idk, perhaps chars with 100med get max Div)
Do the rite changes to cut down on time-consuming bullshit.
Do a change in the supply of good focis.

Religions would be booming. If religions are booming the shard is saved. I have read what Oden has in mind for cities etc so guilds still have a huge cookie outside religions.

As I said above, definitely Skill over Piety. Just some fine tuning to do if it gets added. These are pretty simple ideas which should only require to change already existing rites.

I would go into Tithing as the Religions Document has mentioned but thats for another topic imo.

[Ranokan]

For that matter why create a new skill if you got Meditation already? Do we need both "divinity" and "meditation"? Doesn't make sense to me. If you want to kill the Piety, make it a Meditation skill instead. Job done

[GM Oden]

The reason why I'd add a new skill is cause divinity is the magery for religions and Med your evaluate int.

Adding a skill is 5 minutes tops of work, replacing begging.