Piety Vs. Skill

[GM Oden]

So while I've had some very positive feedback from many players I've discussed this with. I have argued over this for years and I'm finally in a position to do something aboIt it.

This is for a replacement religion system - this is a poll to better help swing other staff around to the idea, so if you really want this you need to vote so.

The pros to skill over piety are as follows:
- Players are only as weak as they want to be, if you put in the time to train, then you are no weaker than the next player who does the same. (You can reach your character's full potential rather than piety being lorded over you by other players or staff)
- Gives staff less to manage within the religion system which means hopefully we can put our time into more projects where as for many years it has always been religions first, second, third, fourth and fifth and everything else just left to languish with half assed "fixes" or "half assed implemented ideas".
- The religion system will be a hell of a lot easier to understand for scripters and players alike as it will be purely based on skill based casting rather than hidden numbers and skill based power rather than a hidden number, it's something every other casting system uses so a scripter can move seamlessly from one casting system to another without much headache.
- There would be no piety drops from starting out when the shard shuts down for awhile. And aside from a potential system where the character loses some skill in their religion skill for religion hopping (haven't decided on a system for discouraging rampant religion hopping), if you like your skill you can keep your skill.
- Piety timers a thing of the past, no artificial gain timers so players can pace themselves in training their character which ultimately means that 2-3 months of inactivity which even other staff had qualms about hence we decided to push people to 30 piety instead of 10 would be a thing of the past.

Cons, there are one or two
- As HP or any other position of power, your rites are no longer stronger than everyone else. However to be clear, those positions in a religion offer those within that position power beyond just prowess on the field of battle.
- An additional skill to train but once trained it is yours unless a system is implemented to penalize it slightly when religion hopping.

So I ask you to vote and I am hoping for a yes on this. I'm putting it at the hands of the players because I've been told that on more than one occasion I don't have a large enough following to support my ideas.

If you have not read my religion write up you might want to read that, particularly near the bottom where I lay out my case for skill over piety Replacement Religion write up.

[Palma]

Sorry for the question, haven't read the attached.

What's the difference between changing all the scripts to work by skill than just give everyone, say, 50 piety? Most rites are already afected by meditation skill, so even if you're at 50, if you're low med, your rites suck/fail. Not saying I'm in favor or against, just understanding what I'm voting on and if all the options were explored.

[Quintoz]

Piety over skill, piety power should be changed.

10 piety should be the same as 40 is currently and what you start at
20 piety should be the same as 50, earnable with effort
30 piety should be the same as 60, hp only.

[Glarundis]

I'd rather have skill over piety.
We had a system for many years where supposedly you could roleplay and achieve higher piety, but not only was it not fair, it was also not balanced due to too high piety being just too good.
Then we had this system where everyone caps at 40p and two players in each religion get higher piety. The others can't compete, no matter what they do, and for seemingly no reason.

I think it's better to just make sure everyone can be "as good". But Palma has a good point, couldn't this be achieved with piety system? Since meditation affects rites. I do prefer the skill option, but instead of just being able to "macro" it, which would actually be quite slow, we could add that idea of raising through items found IG/actions completed IG and lowered through religion hopping or something. Don't know.. But I'm already going offtopic and it's so late here I can't even think straight.

[GM Oden]

Sorry for the question, haven't read the attached.

What's the difference between changing all the scripts to work by skill than just give everyone, say, 50 piety? Most rites are already afected by meditation skill, so even if you're at 50, if you're low med, your rites suck/fail. Not saying I'm in favor or against, just understanding what I'm voting on and if all the options were explored.

The difference here is that replacing piety with a skill is first, a moot point in terms of time vs difficulty. I am if this passes already going to rewrite the entire casting system for rites to begin with so that it is much improved in terms of what it offers to players so changing piety check to skill check is going to be simply a matter of typing in a skill check over piety check. Replacing piety for a skill also means a more simplified canon creation where you do not have to worry about piety on a canon, piety on a symbol or combined concentrating clerics. Obviously some rites will be tweaked and if you had spent time reading the link I posted, I think I lay out a fairly in depth view of the technical aspects of what my plans are for a replacement religion system would be. I have since added to it for notes purposes so that first header at the top is likely unfinished.

The other bonus to using skill over piety is that it allows us to properly balance religions with everything else so that the religious classes and competitive with other classes and there is not this as it was put to me, this notion that religions should be made almost like an open secretive club that offers people the ability to have the power no other classes could achieve as a current staffer put it to me. By properly balance I mean long term not just the usual Pangaea short term band aids that most staff and players have become accustomed to.

Let's call begging something different for this thread, let's call it Divinity for now.

In terms of changing Begging to Divinity is a maybe 5 minute change, I can make it right now and send you the file and your begging skill will be called Divinity in game with no blue gem next to it, that is not an issue at all.

But in terms of using skill over piety for rites, not only is it a moot point in terms of switching from piety to skill, what you would be looking at is a more understandable system for players and staff alike.

Meditation would play the part with rites as Evaluating Intelligence does for Magery. Divinity would in turn with rites play the part the Magery skill does for Mage Spells. It is a system that is tried and tested, one you are all very familiar with and one that any new player to Pangaea but not necessarily Ultima would be able to pick up very quick.

This in turn gives us staff a clear idea of the formulas in which a rite will use. If we set out with a rite such as "Holy Fire" and we say well, it spouts fire and works similar to flamestrike, we have a template to go on instead of scrabbling around in the dark. Similarly while I know that seems like a simple copy and paste job, it allows us to look at other spell systems and fill in niches that aren't filled by those systems a hell of a lot easier as we have opposing templates we can look at and more easily compare.

Going with a skill over piety means, there is no artificial timer for gaining power, you work at your own pace to get to the levels you want to be at within a religion. I know many of you were not happy with the piety timers and hence went to Vulcan and Vulcan himself laid the case out beautifully as to why piety timers do not work. So instead of revamping an artificial piety timer which will likely fail again as this one has, we have a perfect system in place, you use it every time you are playing ultima and training, the skill gain system. There is no scripting that needs to be done, the tweaking is done in an environment that anyone who has spent even a few hours scripting with POL would see as familiar and relatively easy to understand and tweak so why not play to the games strengths instead of using convoluted, quite frankly a failed system which piety and piety timers are. It has only worked thus far because no one has ever staff and I dare say a good percentage wise of the players, have been reluctant to abandon for I assume a couple reasons but the big reason which is always thrown in my face will be my closing statement on piety and it's failures, be prepared, I am about to lob some salvos some of you may find discomforting, disheartening, or any other descriptive negative feeling you can think of.

As to the arguments why piety should remain, if you assess everything I said above, about rewriting the religion system to be more balanced with the rest of the shard to allowing each and every player to reach their full potential without overlords lording piety over people's heads, we come to the biggest argument as to why we should keep piety.

I have been told, piety is a tool in which staff uses to reward RP and this is too valuable to get rid of. So, let's just rip this to shreds, RP is no more of a factor in getting more piety than it is in increasing your Fencing skill. That is utter bull crap, you can be the best RP player on the shard and in a religion and if that is all you want to do, RP diplomatic solutions to conflicts such as PvP battles but do not want to PvP your character will never reach that 60 piety. RP is at most the third or fourth deciding factor in getting more piety and from experiences on two shards now in what is essentially the same religion system just with different names, first on JE and on Pangaea of course, this has always been the case. Favoritism is definitely higher than RP is, PvPness is up above that of course and you can fill in the blank on what you think the third might be if RP does not actually fall in at the whopping third place, winner of none, loser to two places.

Anyway, I am going to end it with this, I want to deliver a religion system you guys deserve, this is not something I want to compromise on, if what you are after is balance and a system that is clear and cut but still offers the thrills and frills the religion system offers but also offers something new where the HP and other leadership rolls are more than just about knocking someone about with super powered rites and buffs, then this idea is for you. Piety should not be about who holds the most and that is what it has become which imbalances things a bit and if piety is what everyone wants to keep I see no reason in even trying to replace a religion system that will be a continuation of a failed system like piety based rites.

Sorry for the length and any harsh tones, this is near and dear to my heart so I feel strongly about it.

[aldath c'om]

skill please.
its bullshit that theres these godlike spots like hp and then theres rest of the people.

[Mr.T]

I would love to have Begging changed to Divinity and having that skill being used as setting one's Piety.
Yes, that means a HP doesnt have more Piety then others. I personally don't care. Shouldnt be a HP just for having more Piety then the rest on your fellow members. A big pluspoint is that Staff doesn't have to 'set' piety levels for people, it can all be handled by the system.

I do wish to point out that "Divinity" % could be different for various of classes:
For instance, Priest get 100% divinity, Monks get 85%, Knights get 65% (You get the picture)
What sort of formula will be used to determine how much "Divinity" grants how much Piety?

[Ondoher]

Oden please, i didnt come here to read a book.

No hate, only love.

[Demian]

Honestly I prefer the piety based system. There's so much you could build on top of this one instead of going the skill way which will just be a static 100 for everyone in a few days. Like Glarundis already mentioned and we talked about this a bit on the public map once aswell - it would be nice to have some task based system for gaining piety. This would atleast tie piety to activity instead of macroing/waiting for timers. Activity/task based piety is similarily fair to everyone, makes more sense RP-wise and depending on the types of tasks could bring activity to the shard. Also I think it's much more interesting. Piety could be capped at some point for everyone, say 50. Although I still think the HP should get free piety. If the HP isn't active he will be removed quickly anyway.

The tasks could be daily/weekly/monthly tasks and each religion member could get a random daily task each day with the weekly and monthly being around for a week/month, maybe because they require more planning or people to complete. Enough days not completing any tasks and you start losing piety.

Some quick examples of tasks could be (these would ofcourse have to be though out more):

Monthly: Siege a town (+3 piety)
Weekly: Kill Law HP (+1 piety)
Daily: Kill all the guards in an opposing religion's town (+0.5 piety)
Daily: Kill 100 plague bearers (+0.5 piety)
etc..

The possibilities are endless.

[Vulcan]

My issue with piety vs skill is balance.

We're currently speaking of 60 piety priests (HP) being overpowered compared to other priests and other classes. Fair enough.

If we turn it into a skill, GM skill will necessarily be similar to (maximum) current 40 piety, simply because we can't allow "N" priests in each religion to be overpowered compared to other classes. So no 50, no 60, forget about it. Plus, it will make it harder for new players since, if you're not GM, you'll be useless. The current piety system equal of 10/20 piety, except the difference will be even more noticeable since everyone else in the religions will be GM, so all you will be forced to do upon joining is... Macro. There's no real choice here.

The piety system, as is stands, is a necessary evil simply because you need some way of striking balance between a priest and every other single character in the shard.