Cost of Crowning too high?

[shockeroo]

I'm just precrowning my current character, and having spent over an hour of real time making monsters chase me to an altar I'm wondering if it's really necessary to need THIS many sacrifices, especially for your first (pre)crowning. There is absolutely zero challenge or danger to someone who knows what they're doing, it's just a horrendous grind and no real fun. Also, only live sacrifices are worth bothering with - pretty much everything else, even items that have a racial sacrifice bonus, aren't worth really sacrificing. Gold and artifacts are okay, but scarce at the point at which most players will (pre)crown. It'd be nice if other sacrifices were valued more too.

I'm considering RFEing that the piety required to crown is halved, and that other sacrifices are worth more piety. Does anybody have any strong thoughts or other suggestions on the topic?

[JellySlayer]

Maybe you should just skip precrowns?

I don't think it should be made easier as it will just encourage people to scum for them.

[SirTheta]

JellySlayer is right. Hearing of so many new players being somehow convinced that precrowning is necessary is depressing. Making it easier won't fix the fundamental problem: people going for a precrown too often in the first place.

[shockeroo]

Why would I ever skip something that is easy and risk-free and gives a significant bonus to my character? (Answer: because it's tedius; but I put up with the tedium. I just want an hour of my life back after every game.)

What's wrong with encouraging people to 'scum' for a (pre)crown. Why is it scumming? Why is that a bad thing? It's a grind, sure, but they're available to everyone who puts the time in - I just think the RL time requirement is excessive and boring. Given that we've cut down on shortcuts like darkforge teleporting, I don't see why we can't also cut back on grindiness.

[shockeroo]

Also massively disagree that 'too many players precrowning is a fundamental problem'. It's a feature for goodness sake.

(I've been playing this game - and precrowning - for over a decade.)

[SirTheta]

Why would I ever skip something that is easy and risk-free and gives a significant bonus to my character? (Answer: because it's tedius; but I put up with the tedium. I just want an hour of my life back after every game.)

It's partly that. Partly is also the fact that (1) it's not guaranteed to give a significant bonus to your character [I mean, hello black tome / cat's claw / etc.] (2) if people spent that time actually playing the game instead of being lured into the false hope of precrowning, they'd learn more, proceed farther, and generally do better at ADOM. Precrownings are the ultimate trap: they suck new players into mediocrity at ADOM.

But, I will turn your own logic against you: if it's so easy, risk-free, and apparently gives a significant bonus, why should it be made less tedious? You would prefer to make it easier to get a free artifact every game? [If so, you're wrong]. I don't mind it being made less tedious - because tedium never seems to work as a barrier - but it would need to be made harder - or eliminated entirely commensurate with such a change.

[JellySlayer]

Why would I ever skip something that is easy and risk-free and gives a significant bonus to my character? (Answer: because it's tedius; but I put up with the tedium. I just want an hour of my life back after every game.)

What's wrong with encouraging people to 'scum' for a (pre)crown. Why is it scumming? Why is that a bad thing? It's a grind, sure, but they're available to everyone who puts the time in - I just think the RL time requirement is excessive and boring. Given that we've cut down on shortcuts like darkforge teleporting, I don't see why we can't also cut back on grindiness.

You've convinced me. Let's make an RFE to eliminate precrowns.

[Yinghei]

The whole mechanic of collecting things (items or monsters) to sacrifice at an altar for a reward encourages grinding. I like the DCSS method of accumulating piety through normal gameplay, but I like that the location of altars in the dungeon in ADOM is part of the randomness that makes every game unique. Maybe piety could be accumulated by sacrificing monsters (alive or corpses, I'm not sure) anywhere in the dungeon, but all other altar-related functions still exist, like praying for a pre/crowning, blessing water, and determining BUC status? Gold might be sacrificable anywhere as well.

[SirTheta]

That wouldn't make any sense. (I mean, for one thing lol, sacrificing live monsters anywhere).

Anyway, it wouldn't work because the ADOM piety system is nothing like DCSS. You cap out pretty early in DCSS and have abilities conferred by different stages of piety - you need to keep your piety up to use them or get gifts or etc. Your max piety is also like 150 and you lose one piety at a time. ADOM has no such thing, piety to crown is like 30k, and you lose a % of piety. So, essentially, if you were to just sacrifice things as you went along, you'd had a hard time gaining piety over time.

You're also ignoring that the system right now is constrained by things like inventory: you can't sacrifice a million extra corpses because you can't carry them / they will rot. A change would completely throw off the existing balance and isn't feasible at all. Requiring altars is fine for ADOM.

[mewmew]

Stay in the room with the altar, press w5, lure monsters. It's quite fast that way.