[CF-Devel] rewards for dropping body parts on altars

[H. S. Teoh]

On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 10:27:26PM -0700, Mark Wedel wrote:
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      "H. S. Teoh" wrote:
     
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      > On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 09:24:09PM +0200, Philipp Currlin wrote:
     
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      > > BehTong, Aprogas and I came up with an idea to give rewards for dropping
     
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      > > body parts of your gods enemies on the altar of your god.
     
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      > > This could be either random items or some experience. On the other hand
     
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      > > the player should expect serious anger for dropping a dead dwarf on the
     
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      > > altar of mostrai, for example.
     
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      > [snip]
     
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       I think this has been discussed before.  The tricky part of this is balance. 
     
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      Some races just generate a lot more parts than others.  for example, the demon
     
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      races generate a relatively low number of body parts.
     
     
I don't see this as a problem:

1) The deity in question doesn't have to reward the player for *every*
  enemy body part offered. We can just have the reward only for very rare
  body parts. All-too-common body parts like orc livers would be completely
  ignored by, say, Lythander, while a gaelotroll's liver might generate some
  nice rewards.

  Another way is to make it level-dependent: a low-level gaea priest offering
  a zombie corpse might be rewarded, but a high-level gaea priest doing the
  same might be regarded with scorn ("What, is that all you can do?!"). On
  the flip side, a low-level priest offering a high-level body part might be
  very risky: perhaps he doesn't yet know the right procedures for 
  preparing the sacrifice, and messing it up might get him a punishment
  instead of a reward.

2) We can also reduce the chances for reward for certain deities, whose
  enemy races generate a lot of body parts.

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      > I was also thinking of punishments like chaining the offending player to a
     
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      > heavy boulder (ala nethack), or, say, lythander punishing a really serious
     
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      > offence by transforming the player into a troll, etc.. This would vary
     
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      > from deity to deity.
     
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       Certainly divine intervention could be expanded to do more things.  Repeated
     
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      praying should be met with some scorn for example.
     
     
I'd like to agree, though it would majorly change how the game is
currently played. (No more altar-camping to get special prayers, e.g., tho
I don't see that as a problem if said prayer is very powerful.)

But as for punishments, there should be a lot more variety. For one thing,
I think the flower cone spell should not happen that often... It's
extremely annoying, and also silly in some cases: I find it totally
bizzare, e.g., for Ruggili to send flowers to encourage his followers...

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      > Another thing I'd like to see is to make killing monsters sacred to your
     
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      > deity have adverse effects. This, of course, is probably somewhere farther
     
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      > in the future, since it would require a lot of maps to be fixed to
     
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      > accomodate this. But nevertheless, I always thought it was weird that i
     
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      > can beat up on angels freely and Valriel couldn't seem to care less,
     
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      > although I keep "feeling a bond" with angels.
     
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       The biggest problem with this (or making them friendly) is that it basically
     
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      makes some maps useless (or even dangerous in a different regard).  I don't
     
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      really know if there are enough maps to basically say say 'you don't need to do
     
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      these'.  For example, followers of gnarg would have a much harder time if they
     
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      can't kill the goblin type races - most of the low level maps use them to a
     
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      great degree (and some of the random dungeons).
     
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       While this realistically makes sense, there are certain playbalance issues with
     
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      this.
     
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       Making the monsters friendly is also only marginally useful if your part of a
     
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      party - youu can't kill them but your friends can?  That would seem to be pretty
     
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      annoying to me.  Also, the friendliness as currently supported is very generic -
     
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      friendly basically means 'friendly to players', and 'not friendly to a specific
     
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      player'.  So that isn't a very good option right now.
     
     
Yeah, I don't expect this to be implemented anytime soon. But I'd like to
see a move in this direction tho... there should be more variety of
monsters in low-level maps (or all maps for that matter), and less
hodge-podge mixing between monster races. (It still makes me cringe to see
demons and angels in the same room... or red dragons and ice dragons in
the same cave, etc..)

I do think tho that friendliness/hostility should be towards a certain
person -- just because some smartass player provoked the royal guard isn't
good enough a reason for said guard to start bashing every player he sees
coming his way. (Of course, this may not be easy to change, so I'm not
expecting it anytime soon, but it'd be a nice thing to have).


T

-- 
Right now I'm having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. I think I've
forgotten this before.