Talk:Devonshire Clerics

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Devonshire is slowly trudging along towards being complete enough to release, and an integral part of that city is the clerics. Since the city is getting recoded, I figured the guild should get recoded as well. I had asked before on the cleric guild board for input, but apparently since Bless no longer grants +200 to everything, the entire guild is useless and no one plays clerics any more (and it seems no one ever bothers to look at the guild boards).

One of the key aspects of reworking a guild is to establish the concept behind the guild. This gives cohesion to the guild and sets up its identity, while preventing it from becoming a loose-knit group of rag-tag adventurers with cool powers. Discussions have been carried out between developers, but the main thing I drew from it was that Chaos has a dislike for the term 'Cleric', and there is no real unifying theme behind the guild other than being a rip-off of D&D clerics.

A trait of LS that seems to span across every porject is that the longer it is on-line, the more it changes and evolves via tiny little tweaks her, small adjustments there, and a few randomly inserted updates. The Clerics are no exception to this. This leads me to my current situation and question. What is the concept of the clerics? Are they spell-casters who derive their powers from the gods, are they holy warriors with certain spell-like abilities, are they predominantly warriors with a few healing spells, or what?--Bladestorm 16:42, 24 December 2008 (EST)

First of all, let me say thank you for undertaking this project. It is long over-due and something I don't think any of us are willing to foot the bill for. So... thanks.

Yes, it's true Chaos(and some others of us, myself included) have a disdain toward the term 'cleric'. It's far too vague for my liking. The clerics, as they are, are simply rip-offs of DnD as you've stated. This bothers me, as they aren't even -good- rip-offs of DnD clerics. =) However, I do not have an idea for a better term for cleric that I can pull out of my miniscule mind at this time.

As far as a guild... clerics as they stand are primarily spell-casting warrior-types. They're a little misleading though, as you'd think they have effective healing spells -- but they don't. The current system of gaining exp for healing is quite nice, but it cripples their ability to make anything of the actual healing effect. One mediocre heal every three minutes(or whatever it is) simple doesn't cut the mustard when you consider all other possible outlets for regaining hitpoints. The offensive capabilities of the current clerics are also mediocre at best. Spiritual hammer is sorta nice, and turn undead is not without it's uses -- but it's all extremely spirit intensive with the current bless. Flame strike is decent, I suppose. I believe the code is outdated though, which makes it impossible to use in groups. Having not played Canada for awhile though, this may or may not be true.

As a side note: I realize bless was a bit outrageous -- I agree with nerfing it... however not to the extent in which it has. That extra spirit was vital to actually utilizing the high-cost spells in our arsenal, in my opinion.

Using bless as a segway, the cleric defensive/support spells are adequate. Blade barrier is fantastic, as is protection from evil(though not lasting as long as desired, but hey, what can you do). However, with low spec access in combat skills, a now pitiful bless, and few options for self-healing, the once-great defensive grimore has been nuked to mediocre. Support spells, even without bless, have their ups and downs. Prophylaxis doesn't last long enough in my opinion, but I've yet to really time it. Things like wind walk, regenerate, resist fire, neutralizing poison... yeah, they are nice to have. That's probably the only positive point of playing a cleric these days. (except for not being able to neutralizing poison on the same person within 3 minutes, but you can cure disease them as much as you want. that blows my feeble mind)

For a recoded cleric, I'd like to see the existing spell-casting scheme done away with. Memorizing spells is simply a throwback to the DnD ripoff-ishness of the current clerics. Praying for the worshipped God to bring the power of said invocation down upon someone would be more thematic(if any theme were to actually exist). That's just a piss-poor random idea though, so take it with a grain of salt.

As for your question -- if clerics are a spell-caster guild, a paladinish guild, or just warriors with healing -- I'd like to see them around the middle. Right now, they are warriors with poor spell casting abilities all around. They're sort of in the same boat as outsiders are -- people keep them around for the novelty and occasional support usage. I don't know what direction you would take your new clerics, but if you need my help in any way, shape, or form feel free to poke me. =)

Thanks again. Lysolian 15:10, 23 December 2008 (EST)

• Clerics should be walking advertisements for their God. Using their God's power to heal the faithful, defend the faith, destroy the enemy and hopefully convert the rest. So, I don't think seperate gods should be within the same guild. I think a cleric-like guild is only suitable for certain gods. Some gods would be more subtle or wouldn't care about such things, etc. Cleric as a term might be suitable for one god, but each religion should have it's own terms. I've been playing Gesus a lot recently, a cleric of Gaia who spends most of his time curing disease and helping defend losthaven. It's kinda fun with the new disease changes. But I shouldn't have the same spell list as a cleric of odin. The gods should be separated and their powers/spells/abilities made more thematic. I don't know which gods fit into Devonshire and Avalon. Are they the gods that were worshiped on Avalon before the Altrian empire brought Yehovah? How do they get along with the Knights? Fruri 15:02, 23 December 2008 (EST)

So what is it that draws people to play clerics in the first place? The awe-inspiring uber-boosts of bless? The potential to nuke opponents with Wrath? Do some people just want to play out the support role when grouping? Is it the versatility of the spells? As handicapped as everyone is playing them out to be, I don't see how bless, as uber as it used to be, could possibly compensate for all of the negativity listed above (low combat spec access, etc).

And to answer the Avalon question, Devonshire is a port city, and most of the religions represented were brought in by travellers. Ilsidahur (Swiped from Greyhawk) is a god venerated in the jungle environs of the south, Odin was brought in from the frozen north, Horus from the desert, Gaia from the more Graecan cultures, and Azuth was bastardized over from Forgotten Realms as 'the god of mages and wizards'. In the upcoming update of Devonshire, more churches are represented, which could possibly give me the opportunity to swap out some of the gods in favour of better theme. Anyway, the knights and church of Yehovah have mor pressing concerns, like possible invasion from Esartur, to contend with, so travellers were allowed to have their own small shrine or altar, so long as they did not openly oppose the teachings of Yehovah. Decades later, more people have travelled through Devonshire, bring with them more ecclectic religions. Once the crusade to end the threat of Esartur has finished, then Avalon can turn towards weeding out the other religions. Direct correlation between non-yehovite religion and pagan religions is a little difficult to do. "How do you know your god even exists, pagan?" "Hold on. Lemme dig a warpstone out of my pack, and I'll introduce you directly to him." --Bladestorm 17:01, 23 December 2008 (EST)

• Maybe it would make more sense to keep all the Devonshire gods in one guild as some sort of pantheon. With different spells invoked by praying to appropriate gods. If the locals were adopting varied gods from varied sources it was probably because they found they could pray to that god for something they couldn't get from the other gods. The power of the prayers partly being based on your favor with the appropriate god. Maybe with special powers from whoever your the favorite of. But you could change your favored deity by your skill choices, stats, offerings, completely special tasks, etc. Fruri 17:27, 23 December 2008 (EST)

• • I have contemplated the pantheon idea, but the way the gods are currently set up, a lot of the gods were combined into one, so instead of having 4 gods of the water for 4 pantheons, someone decided that there would only be one actual god of the water, just worshipped as 4 different aspects by 4 different cultures of people. This concept may have been advisable earlier when the entirety of the world was the 40x40 space of Almeria, and all cultures were crammed in there, but now that the world is expanding out some, I am thinking that the separate pantheons can be better developed. And with this, individual gods can be better developed as to have actual personalities, which get reflected in the followers that worship them. Hopefully, as the world continues to expand, the possibilities of pantheons will become more of a reality.--Bladestorm 16:42, 24 December 2008 (EST)

Re: What draws people to play clerics anyway?

When I first created Canada, it was because I didn't see very many clerics on. Playing it was always a challenge -- as one could tell by how godly long it took me to hero in the first place. I chose Odin and rocked the spears... which basically was basically because I'm unoriginal. It worked fairly well in the beginning, but only because I had bless, haste, blade barrier, protection from evil, spiritual hammer, and flame strike. ...those were really the only spells I used. I didn't touch things like 'sticks for snakes' which has to be the most useless fucking thing since they started making vibrators out of chocolate and toffee. ...wait, I don't think they actually do that.

(note: marketing idea)

Anyway, flame strike is kinda nice considering you can just forage for sticks and spam the ever-loving piss out of it. So, I abused that worse than a three-dollar whore in the bad part of Vegas. Once bless was nerfed though, I just didn't have the spirit to keep it up... so level 65 is where Canada will stay. Poor Canada, always mediocre, even in text games. (I offer no apologies to our Canadian players... take off, ya hosers.)

You're right about bless not compensating for the flaws Clerics inherently have. Low spec access without supplimental benefit is really rough to overcome. Sure, some guilds(e.g. Aligned) have absolutely horrendous combat access... but they have a lot to make up for it. Clerics fail to have that. They have a lot of supportive benefits, but they are poorly designed for the MUD these days. Chant is nigh-on useless, because no one wants to sit around long enough for it to be worth a damn. Healing has it's issues like I mentioned above. What I don't understand is why healing exp wasn't done a little differently; such as only getting healing exp every three minutes, but being able to drop the big heal bomb whenever you wanted. I'm sure that's abusable in ways that I cannot even begin to think about, but the current system is more debilitating than helpful. Resist spells are fan-figgity-tastic, so I cannot even begin to complain about them. That's really the essential role of the clerics... cast a bunch of spells to make sure they die slower.  :P However, it's not always easy to find a group on our little slice of Heaven we have here... especially when you are me and no one wants to group with you because a painful death is very surely coming soon afterwards.

Another thing is less-than-helpful help files. Who would have guessed Empathy was a main skill?

Oh, and seek out the input of Porphyria. He knows way more than I do.

Hope this helps. Like I said, feel free to ask me for any help you need, bro. Lysolian 19:44, 23 December 2008 (EST)

• I would have picked up the clue from the guild instructor, who teaches Empathy to a really high degree (compared to many of the other skills he teaches), and the fact that it is one of the required skills for Clerics. So, basically out of the dozens of spells in the cleric arsenal, only 6 were worth using? Looks more like you were wanting a guild that had spells to make you invincible, with a separate set of spells to blast your opponents into oblivion, and the last set of spells to make you gain xp faster.... --Bladestorm 16:42, 24 December 2008 (EST)

So, from what I have gathered from talking with Eshara and a couple of other clerics online and from the posts above, there is going to have to be a lot of work done with the guild, so much so that it may as well be a complete overhaul. Bless, if it is to remain, will need better balancing, healing spells would need a better anti-nerf mechanism (though the same xp gain may be nice to add to things like Cure Disease and Neutralize Poison), combat mechanism need to be better balanced (especially between various gods), the entire spell list needs revision, there seems to be more need for support spells, and a need for a wider variety of spells to choose from so that there isn't one specific go-to spell that every cleric relies upon to gain xp.

Drawing from the success of the OZM and the Aligned and Rangers, it seems that the guild will need an extensive amount of flexibility and personalization, so that two players can be in the same guild and be 'built' completely differently. Both OZM and Aligned have a long ramp of development, so that at level 50, you still aren't done learning about the guild. Of course, this is also aided by their modular design, which makes it easy to add new stuff in and maintain everything.

I am thinking that the first step in setting the guild up successfully is to determine how exactly the powers will work. I'd like to have more interactive god personalities, such as how the ELF are set up. Certain gods like certain sacrifices and dislike other sacrifices. Sacrifice an item blessed by Loki to Thor, and bad things happen; sacrifice a Torquar torture implement to Ganesh, and you are rewarded for removing that taint from the physical world--general little stuff like that. At any rate, I have to determine if the spells will be a portion of the power of the gods, imbued upon the caster as merely a vessel of the will of the gods, or if the caster has a small reservoir of the power of their patron god that they can do with as they please, or if the spell-casting proces is done via divine guidance, or even some other methodology to the spell-casting process.

Once that is done, the next step would be to determine which gods to include in this worship. I have some ideas already, but more input is never a bad thing.

After that, it should be a relatively easy task to determine the spells and get them defined.

Over top of all of that, I still have to figure out how to keep the guild engaging enough to keep the attention of the older players, simple enough that it can easily be picked up by newer players, versatile enough to accomodate many different playing styles, while ensuring that it take quite a while to reach the full potential in the guild (and at the same time being functional at lower levels).

At any rate, I have one big project nearing completion, after which I can start digging further into the concepts behind the guild (players seem to like the visualization process of the Aligned, which is far better thought out than 'pray to my god for a spell, then spam the hell out of it'). It's going to be a lot of work, and these holidays are killing my online time. I haven't been able to get a solid weekend worth of coding in since before Thanksgiving.--Bladestorm 16:42, 24 December 2008 (EST)