How can we fix crowning

[gr3ybird]

Crowning is totally broken. It's a totally mindless zero risk activity. You stand in front of the altar and press '_'. That's pretty much it. The really weird thing is that adom usually tries to discourage grinding (kpl system, decreased experience with more kills, monster type scaling, etc), but this is about the most grindy activity imaginable. It's actually more boring than just grinding for exp/items, because at least there you don't just stay in the same spot pressing the same button over and over.

Some people say there should be a special quest or something, but that's a pie in the sky idea that is years off if it ever gets put in. Instead, I suggest this:
greatly reduce the piety from live saccing and greatly increase the piety from items that are sacced. Force the player to actually have to give up something of value to get something good here. Make artifacts give a ton of piety.

Second, don't tie pre/post crowning to level or number of artifacts. Just make the price appropriate for the reward. If you have to sac really good items to be crowned once, then you have to sac *really really* good items to be crowned the next time. That way there is a natural and rational restriction on how many times you can crown. You can do the weird 'don't crown a second time until level 11' or you could have a much more rational system where you say, okay, I'm only going to let adamantium and better tier items be sacced the second time around. No < level 11 player is going to have a lot of adamantium stuff anyway, and this way you don't have weird level restrictions on things.

Point is: if you are resourceful enough to figure out a way to meet the criteria, who cares what your level is. Encourage smart play, not grinding three more levels, which is just boring (and requires pretty much zero risk/spending of resources).

Monster generation is kind of tied to this. Right now you need heavy respawning for crown grinding. Instead, populate the level normally once the first time it is entered, then decrease monster generation rates greatly. You have to wade through a ton of weak enemies every time you backtrack through an area right now. What's the point? It's just annoying. There are enough optional dungeons now that no one should need the regenerating bad guys to get an item, and if crowning is changed like I'm talking about they won't be needed for that either.

[Carter]

live sacrifices are the problem tbh.

thats why i never pre-crown these days- too boring. It also means if you get a good artifact it takes all the challenge out of the game. Its like trading your time/fun for more chance to win, which isn't cool.

[shockeroo]

Contentious point, I raised similar thoughts before. There's little consensus on the topic. Worth reading through some of this:

http://www.adom.de/forums/showthread...wning-too-high

[gr3ybird]

Contentious point, I raised similar thoughts before. There's little consensus on the topic. Worth reading through some of this:

http://www.adom.de/forums/showthread...wning-too-high

You said in your topic 'The cost is too high', but wouldn't it be okay to have a high cost if it was paid with something other than mindless live saccing? I mean, the cost of getting artifacts from greater vaults is high, but it's high in a fun way, right? The cost here is high in a boring, grindy way.

That's why I'm talking about actual risk/having to give up something useful versus no risk and giving up nothing useful (unless you really wanted to use that goblin you sacced for something else).

EDIT: Lol at 'if the reward is high, the process should be tedious'. Maybe we should take out greater vaults and have the player fight through 20 levels filled with goblins to get to artifacts. Make crowning hard, not boring.

[shockeroo]

My core problem is indeed that it's mindless, boring, grinding. That's a problem with piety in general, not just pre-crowns. Earning Fate Smiles and grinding off Dooming are also a pain in the ass. Also I think it's odd that racial sacrifice preferences don't impact enough to matter; it's a pretty pointless feature as it currently stands.

Beyond establishing that as the problem, I'm somewhat open-minded about what to change. Some liked my proposed solution, but quite a few others didn't.

I'm not in love with your solution, as it effectively replaces live-sac grinding with item grinding, or at least carrying around large stacks of stuff. Also quite subjective; what is a 'good' item? A spellbook of fireball? Ego weapons? Higher metal items? TBH I'd rather remove pre-crown artifacts entirely and have a guaranteed surge of power with a decent guardian somewhere in the early-mid game.

[ghostjghost]

Personally I think crowning is (for the most part) fine as it is.

It is an optional part of the game.

I almost never precrown and I regular crown maybe once every five games usually right before attempting TOEF.



I think it's odd that racial sacrifice preferences don't impact enough to matter; it's a pretty pointless feature as it currently stands.

I do agree with this though, there is not enough of a boost to make it worth the trouble, just sac gold instead. (although it is sometimes amusing playing a troll and being able to sac rocks :P)

[grobblewobble]

I think it's odd that racial sacrifice preferences don't impact enough to matter; it's a pretty pointless feature as it currently stands.

For dwarves it does make a difference. Hurthlings (cooked corpses) and orcs (artifact weapons like ancient scythe, sword of nonnak) too.

[blunk]

It is mindless because you know the game too well, you know exact what aligns mobs are and which mobs can't be sacrified at all, this does not apply to all players.

I can see the possibility of broken with early precrowning but I don't think it's such a big deal.
I like that adom allows in certain regards us to tweak difficulties on our own by choice of race/class/starsign (yes this requires some grind) and to some extent stat-/starting gear rolls.
I would maybe put precrown in that same category... with the exception that precrown artifact is not garanteed to be useful neither is an early game altar.

Also when inexperienced gathering up that big pile of cash for crowning is not super easy.

What have made adom so much easier is shared information and experience with other ppl on the internet.

[gr3ybird]

So, a couple of things:

I'm not in love with your solution, as it effectively replaces live-sac grinding with item grinding, or at least carrying around large stacks of stuff. Also quite subjective; what is a 'good' item? A spellbook of fireball? Ego weapons? Higher metal items? TBH I'd rather remove pre-crown artifacts entirely and have a guaranteed surge of power with a decent guardian somewhere in the early-mid game.

Yeah, that might actually be a lot better. I'm totally cool with that, more surges of power/greater vaults whatever instead of precrowning. If you ever wanted to RFE this I would back you up on it.

I personally think surges of power might as well not even exist right now.

[gr3ybird]

Personally I think crowning is (for the most part) fine as it is.

It is an optional part of the game.

Okay, lets look at this in a little more detail. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but my understanding of what you are saying is basically this (correct me if I cam wrong, please): crowning is optional, who cares if it is boring?

But think about this:

Darkforge is optional and not boring.
The bug temple is optional and not boring.
The smc is optional and not boring.
Greater vaults are optional an not boring.
etc.

These are all potentially high reward areas. But they gate reward with risk and skill threshold, not with monotony. Saying (with seriousness) that high reward areas of a game should be boredom gated is maybe the worst statement of game design philosophy I've ever heard anyone seriously make.

You know what else is optional?

Playing the game itself. But we all agree that should be made as fun as possible.